


playing with fire

by baunitchief (emeryazure)



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F, Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Murder, Strong Language, Suicidal Thoughts, just thought i'd warn, major death of original character, not too serious, yeah there's just a lot guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:18:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13897077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeryazure/pseuds/baunitchief
Summary: JJ and Emily have been together for twenty years but the tragic and traumatic events of the past year have torn them apart almost completely, the only thing that have them holding on by a thread is their two sons and the bittersweet hope of justice.





	1. one person dead from such is plenty

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired and is loosely based on "three billboards outside of ebbing missouri" so be warned that the violence and intense themes of that film are present in this work. and it's just pretty rough all around, folks. i wouldn't blame you if you completely hate me for doing this cause i kind of hate myself for doing this to you and to myself.
> 
> the title of this comes from the song "Playing With Fire" by Brandon Flowers.
> 
> PSA: I DO NOT CONDONE ANY OF THE ACTIONS THAT TAKE PLACE IN THIS FIC AS THEY ARE UNHEALTHY. IT IS A WORK OF FICTION AND SHOULD REMAIN SO, THANKS

It was an early summer day and thankfully the sweltering heat had not set in as the storms of spring and summer that melded the seasons together were keeping the days cool. Jennifer Jareau was driving the old black SUV, one that had held so many happy memories, the same one they’d had for years and sweet memories of three blonde haired children resided in it.

She can’t believe it had been a year. Well, a year and a day but who was counting other than a certain blonde and brunette, two former FBI profilers who had quit the bureau shortly thereafter. She let the aviators hide the deep set gray craters below her eyes. Her hands shook more readily the closer they got to the cabin. The two boys inside the vehicle were calmer than she was by far.

Her youngest son in the back of the vehicle was escaping into the sounds that his iPhone delivered and her oldest, nearly entirely a man now, was set in the front seat, his blonde brow furrowing beneath the black-rimmed glasses that set on his face. She can tell that the 22-year-old was lost in deep thoughts of his own. She reached out her unsteady right hand, grateful that at least her left was stable on the steering wheel, to clasp with his and send him a grave smile. He took it but didn’t look from the window he was staring out of.

“Hey,” JJ said softly but it might as well have been a bomb going off in the vehicle with the dead silence between them. “Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” Henry asked, snapping out of his thoughts to finally look over at his mother. “Oh yeah, uh, yeah, I’m good.”

“You sound about as convincing as me,” the blonde woman offers quietly. She let her son’s hand drop replacing her left hand on the steering wheel with her right as the other went to lean against the door panel. Her fingers lacing her brow, she could feel the year of stress set there.

“When was the last time you actually came out here and saw mom?” the boy asked, back to staring out the window as he watched the greenery of the mountains fly past them now.

“Uh,” JJ contemplates, her hand falling over her mouth with worry. “It’s been a couple of months but you know I still talk to her all the time, why does it matter?”

“I just wonder about her sometimes is all,” Henry says with a shake his head. “I mean, after everything that happened with Carrie, she just sort of, I don’t know, I felt like I hardly recognized her when I came home for Christmas.”

JJ swallows thinking about this. The boy was right because Emily had changed since everything had happened. But honestly, most of them had changed in some fashion or another but that was usually because they we’re all just trying to keep their heads above water and not drown in it.

“Do you really think she’s happy up here?” Henry asks seemingly out of the blue as the silence had fallen over them again and the drive continued. “I mean, moving up here so close to where everything happened and all, I just-”

“Honestly, I don’t know, Henry,” JJ admitted, she knew her son was no longer a child and was aware of the harsh realities of life especially after this past year. “I doubt that you could say that your mother is happy anymore but she did always love the mountains so maybe she’s found some sort of solace up here that we just haven’t yet.”

Henry nods his head in silence and continues staring, lost in thoughts of his mother. The dark-haired woman was but a shell of her former self the last time he had seen her. Her brown eyes were dulled, there was a stoic-ness to her that hadn’t been there prior despite the woman always having a serious air about her. But she was not the mom he once knew, the one that could laugh, would try and fail at playing the video games that her sons adored and would roll around in the grass with them playing cops and robbers even though it was all too real for the former agent at work.

He even recalls the time that the brunette let Caroline dress her up as a pretty princess and put on a fashion show for their family and the team. It had been one of his favorite memories and it’s how he liked to remember the two of them together, dressed up in pinks and purples and a mess of makeup adorning their faces. The two wearing smiles that could last for ages, it was the best version of his usually too tough mother that he could remember.

JJ watches as best she can the emotions play over her eldest son’s face as she pulled up to the relatively rundown cabin and puts the vehicle into park. She watches the grin that laces his features fall suddenly as the reality seems sets in again and his face with it. She closes her eyes in the grief of it all. How had her family become such a fragmented portion of what it once was?

“Hey, where’d you go there?” JJ inquires quietly, letting the air between them fall freely.

The young man just shakes his head and looks at her with a half-hearted smile and she could almost see the bittersweet memories playing in his blue eyes, “Back to better, more simple times.”

She realizes that Michael has ripped the headphones out of his ears and is already halfway out of the car now and there’s only one person who could draw such a reaction out of the usually quiet and well-mannered boy, his other mother. As much as Henry and Caroline both had given JJ and Emily hell throughout their teenager years, it was so far smooth sailing with their third child. She wonders if that is chalked up to chaos and mayhem that impeded on their lives the past year.

“Mom!” she hears Michael exclaiming through the rolled up windows as he ran up the gravel driveway to meet his older mother who stood on the porch. JJ relieves herself of the aviators set over her eyes as she takes in the woman who was still technically her wife. Her dark, now nearly salt-and-pepper hair was in its short, usual bob, she wore a brown button up over cargo pants and combat boots. Despite everything, JJ still thinks that she’s the best looking woman that she’s ever seen.

With one final look over at Henry who seemed to be gazing longingly at the woman out the window, she nods her head and finally opens the door and eases her way out of the SUV. The blonde realizes that her son is doing the same but maybe at a slower pace. Maybe this was just as hard on them both.

The younger woman can’t help but feel her heart ache a little further at the sight of her fifteen-year-old son embracing his mother and not wanting to let go. She knew that everything had fallen the hardest on Michael, he was the youngest and still living at home so he was certainly the most effected by the sudden absence of his sister and then his mother with the separation. The blonde usually was on the receiving end of his backlash and blame but she was never angry with him. Hell, she couldn’t fault him.

As Emily and Michael pull away from their hug, blue and brown meet in a stare and both boys are not ignorant to the estranged nature of their mothers’ relationship. But somehow they always knew that there was still love there, they had witnessed it all their lives and it never faltered. Not at least until they all lost Caroline.

“Jennifer,” Emily nods towards her wife with squinted eyes in the summer sun.

“Emily,” JJ responded with her own nod as she looked away from the brown eyes that had always held her heart captive. She crosses her arms over her chest more out of defensiveness than anything.

“Alright, Henry, I get that you’re about to be a big Ivy League college grad and all, big man on campus,” Emily says with a weak smile on her face when addressing her oldest. “But you’re never too big to give your mom a hug so get over here.”

JJ is vaguely aware of Henry doing just that, walking over and embracing his older mother. She watches as his head dips in the curve of the woman’s neck and suddenly his shoulders are shaking. The blonde stands more readily, shifting and starting to make her way over when she sees Emily’s eyes meet hers and holds the hand that is around her son out towards her wife in a signal to stop. JJ hesitantly agrees and looks away. She couldn’t stand this.

“Henry, bud, it’s alright,” the brunette says softly to her son. She’s aware of Michael standing next to her, head downcast in thought. “Hey, I’m right here, we’re all right here, you know?”

“Carrie’s not,” she hears the man sniffle and mumble into her shoulder, shaking his head in his grief.

“No, she’s not,” she says as she pulls away, one hand staying steady at the base of his neck. She looks him the eye now. She gestures with her other hand, a finger aimed right at his heart. “But she is right here, she has and always will be right here, son.”

The oldest blonde boy just nods but then shakes his head, sniffling and wiping at his nose. Seeming a little ashamed at his show of emotions but they all knew he was the most sensitive member of their family, the one who channeled how JJ used to let herself be, open and vulnerable. She hardly even remembers that version of herself anymore. It had been so long.

“Why don’t you boys grab your bags and go check out your rooms that I setup for you?” Emily suggests easily, gesturing towards the old SUV. “Grab your momma’s things while you’re there and just put her things in my room.”

Both boys look at JJ now for a cue, a little confused at the notion that their blonde mother would be staying with Emily after everything that had happened. She just rolls her eyes as she says, “Don’t act so surprised, we are still married after all and it’s not the first time we’ve slept together.”

“Ew, gross,” they hear Michael groan but both boys do as they’re told, making their way back to the vehicle. The youngest teases the oldest about being a cry baby and they get into a little playful shoving match on the way there. The two women know that the boys have a close bond to one another and have never really been the kind to fight so they smile watching them go.

The blonde rolls her eyes again at the boys though as she makes her way closer to Emily, facing her and looking over the cabin a little closer as she nears. Her eyes wander over the outside, a fresh coat of paint set there actually livened the place up a bit. She couldn’t help but feel disconnected from it though, regardless of years of happy memories spent there. This would always be the place that her daughter came to die. She has to force the thought out of her head before it threatens her completely.

“The place looks good, Em,” JJ sighs while staring up the old place that she used to love coming to on vacations. “Early retirement is keeping you busy, I see.”

“Yeah, I got sick of looking at the dingy beige and decided that brown suited it better,” Emily says with a shrug. “It’s more than I’ve done for the inside but it’s a start.”

The boys pass them and make their way up the rickety old stairs with their bags and Emily offers her hand toward the entrance. JJ takes in a deep breath and stares the place down as if it were a formidable foe. But as she feels the brunette’s hand land on her back, she manages to move forward again, nodding her head.

They all make their way through the doorway and the boys make a straight line for the old bedrooms that they used to use as kids. JJ can’t seem to make it any farther than the living area. She recognizes the old, worn out couches and tables. The only relatively new items were the endless boxes scattered about that were mostly untouched.

Emily had been here for nearly six months now and she still hadn’t unpacked. JJ knows this is something to be expected of the brunette because Emily had travelled the world once so often that unpacking might seem useless. That was until she met the younger blonde. So much had changed in their twenty years together but JJ supposes that old habits die hard.

“You know, a long time ago there was a case that we were working together, at an unsub's apartment and he hadn't unpacked anything at all. Do you remember what you told me when I asked what it meant that he lived like that?” JJ inquires as Emily looks over at her with her brow furrowed, shaking her head and licking her lips slightly. “You told me it was because he was _stuck_.”

The brunette seems to realize what her estranged wife was insinuating now and she shakes her head, trying her best to remain calm although these days, it’s more hard for Emily than not. She hardly even remembers what an even temperament looks like but all that was before last year and the drinking and everything else that had gone wrong in her life.

She can’t hold in or temper the words that finally shoot back out like venom, “Yeah, well, I'm not the one who chooses to stay in that old house and keep that bedroom like a shrine or better yet a fucking tomb of who our daughter was.”

“I’m the one who lives in a fucking tomb, me?” JJ angrily asks, incredulously really because she genuinely couldn’t believe that Emily Prentiss, of all people, was judging her. “This is where our daughter spent her final hours before she walked into those woods to die, Emily!”

Emily winces at the harsh words but she couldn’t exactly fight her wife on the matter. It was the truth. This is where Caroline Jareau Prentiss had come to celebrate her graduation with some of her friends; they had planned to spend a night out camping but decided to stay in the cabin because of bad weather.

Instead the girls decided to get drunk off Emily and JJ’s wine. While the other girls had passed out, Caroline had wandered into the woods to throw up and no one saw her again until her body was found two days later. Her throat slashed with seventeen stab wounds all over her body with clear evidence that she had been raped. The older woman knew these details like the back of her hand, like she could ever forget them.

_The older woman had never walked two miles faster in her life. She didn’t even know if her wife was keeping up with her but she knew that if JJ felt the same fire in her bones, the same terrifying ache and intense thumping of her heartbeat in her ears then she was. They had gotten the call from Rossi. They had found her two miles away from the cabin._

_Rossi was long retired from the Bureau again, this time for good but he had made the trip when he heard the news that Caroline was missing. The FBI and BAU had insisted on taking the case, there was no other option when the Unit Chief’s daughter was the one at stake. It didn’t matter if the case was too close or that it was a conflict of interest. They would all be damned if they weren’t the ones to find her._

_Emily nearly runs smack into Rossi and Reid on her way past but the older man had her by the stomach before the scene was entirely in view. Reid had done the same of JJ, grabbing her before she could truly witness what had been done to her daughter._

_“Emily, please, I promise you, you don’t want to see her,” Rossi had tried to reason with the woman that was fighting against him with all she could muster. “You can’t remember her, not like this.”_

_“Fuck you, Rossi, don’t tell me what I want and don’t want,” Emily said as she manages to free herself from the man’s grasp. “That is my daughter and I’ll be damned if you or anyone else tries to stop me.”_

_Reid had looked into JJ’s eyes, his big brown orbs begging her and she could read it. He was begging her not to go, to not see the state of his goddaughter. She could see all the regret in his eyes that he ever had. The blonde could count on one hand how many times she had seen Spencer Reid cry but this was one of them. He didn’t just have tears in his eyes, he was openly crying and the salty substance was making its way down his cheek as she made her way past him to follow her wife._

_The two women made their way up the slope slower now, each foot dragging them closer to the one thing they had seen a million times but never like this. Never so close. The scene was much like any other and they knew it. The local law enforcement was traipsed around, forensic units were combing for anything they could find and Luke Alvez and Tara Lewis were standing near the body._

_Luke standing a ways away but staring at the girl with wide eyes, flared nostrils and his jaw set tight. Tara was kneeled next to the girl gazing upon the young woman with all the love and kindness and regret that she had ever felt in her life._

_Emily knew instinctively that Rossi and Reid were following her and JJ but keeping a safe distance. JJ had managed to be the first one to arrive at the plateau that evened out into a lining of trees there. The scenery would be beautiful and ideal had it held almost any other scene other than this._

_The blonde stops in her footsteps as she witnesses the lifeless body of her daughter, her daughter who she had given birth to, the daughter who she had cared for from the moment she was brought into existence. Emily stopped short herself and she sees her daughter, the one that had scared the shit of her when she first found about her, the one that she had vowed she would protect until her dying breath but here she was. The blonde and brunette were staring at the lifeless body of their daughter, their child. The one they both knew that they had so completely, utterly and readily failed._

_JJ had never felt a shot of pain wreak havoc through her body, not when she was shot nor when she was tortured, no. There was no greater pain than at that moment, the moment she looked upon her little girl with her throat cut wide open, the dirt and debris upon her seeping into the open stab wounds, her body barely covered by the clothes that had been torn from her by whoever had done this and who had tossed them haphazardly over her. That’s the moment that the sob releases itself from her mouth, her hand falling over it to keep it at bay but there was nothing that could hold the waves that took her under now._

_Emily just stared, entirely numbed by the millions of crimes she had witnessed by countless murderers, thieves and rapist across the entire world. It was a sight that was never supposed to get easier but over time, the brunette knew it did. It’s what made her Unit Chief, at both Interpol and the BAU. The ability to show no emotion at things like this but she never thought that she wouldn’t be able to feel it. But this was not easy by any means and it did not feel real. It was the hardest thing the woman would ever come to see in her lifetime. There was no crime scene she had ever witnessed or scoured that had left her feeling quite so entirely empty and cold as this one did. Yet she was emotionless. Her wife was crumbling next to her and her daughter was dead in front of her. And Emily Prentiss did not a feel a goddamn thing in that moment._

_She faintly feels her wife tugging at her shoulder before the blonde has completely turned and walked away from the scene. She hears the feint sounds of the woman collapsing behind her and the sounds of both her and Reid’s sobs. The younger man desperately attempting comfort but Emily knew there was no such thing as comfort. That’s when the graying David Rossi comes up beside her, entirely facing her with his bloodshot stare as serious as she’d ever seen him. She somehow manages to swivel her neck to meet his eyes, her own cold ones were starting to shake with what felt like the sting of tears._

_She simply shakes her head once, staring up at the sky and back towards the man. Emily doesn’t cry when she sees the lifeless body of her daughter in the aftermath of her rape and murder._

“It’s still here, isn’t it?” Emily hears the words come out of her wife’s mouth but she is caught drifting off into the past, dead eyes searching for nothing. The older woman senses her wife go in a huff, the blonde a mere streak in her peripherals, off to the left and into the dining area that had been covered by a sheet long ago. She pulls back the curtain and there it lies and the younger woman is swinging back towards her wife. “How dare you have the nerve to call me out and say I’m living in a tomb when you are quite literally living with your daughter’s corpse plastered on the walls and a white board?”

Emily’s eyes roam the room, anywhere but the blue ocean of passion in her wife’s eyes. She sees it, every single bit of what logic JJ was spewing but she couldn’t face it. She looks at the white board where her daughter’s senior photo is posted there. The details of how she was taken only feet away from this very house and dragged two miles to that plateau where she was beat and raped by a man. She was choked and held at knife point before he slashed her throat as he was still inside her, and then stabbed multiple times then left to bleed out and die. It was dark and it was bleak but it was reality.

The blood spatter reports, the DNA, the partial prints that just weren’t ever enough to find the man who did this to their little girl were all there and constantly in her face. In gory and bold detail splayed out on the walls and in boxes opened. In fact it was one of the few things in the cabin that Emily Prentiss had actually unpacked.

“How can you live like this, Emily?” JJ asked in a mere whisper, tears welling in her eyes and she searches but her wife doesn’t let her find her irises. But the blonde needed answers, she needed to know that she hasn't entirely lost everything in her life to one single man’s actions cause right now, it felt like it. She rubs her fingers over her eyes, exasperated. “You can’t live like this.”

“How do you expect me to live, JJ, huh? Like it never happened?” the brunette suddenly finds her voice as it spills over her tongue in anger and bitterness and harshness. “Like our daughter wasn't brutally beaten, raped and murdered? She is our daughter, Jennifer, and she’s dead!”

“You don’t think I know that?!” the blonde screams back in vehemence as she shoots forward in her own fury, stopping just centimeters from her wife’s face. “I know that, Em, I know that but when the DNA doesn't match anyone who’s ever been arrested and the MO, the victimology, the geological profile doesn't match any other crime in the nation and when there wasn't a single eyewitness that saw our daughter leave this cabin then we have nothing, there is no case, and there are no leads here.”

The younger woman is panting in the face of the brunette who stares her dead in the eyes and JJ saw it, she still managed to see in that dead stare a slight glimmer of hope. She wishes she could understand it but she doesn’t. Maybe JJ came to understand things that had no reason or explanation or justice to them more readily because of what her sister had done when she was still so young. You tend to accept the inconceivable that much easier when your sister kills herself out of the blue one day and you never get the answers you search for. So perhaps it was instinct, second nature now.

JJ and Emily are broken from their intense glare by the deep clearing of a throat. Both women’s eyes shoot away from each other to look at their two sons, two sets of big blue eyes searching them after clearly having heard the entire argument. Henry’s eyes are pleading between his two mothers while Michael’s innocent eyes were taking in the expanse of contents spread out in the dining room.

“Uh, me and Mikey are gonna head down to the water and try to catch some fish,” Henry says with a slight shrug, looking away and out the window nearby. “You know, like old times and all.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” the younger woman nods her head at this, her blonde ponytail bobbing with the movement as she looks away from every single member of her family, not able to take any of them in at the moment. Her lips caught tight under her teeth for a moment and as the boys start to walk away in their unseeing way, the woman calls back. “And Henry, look after your little brother.”

Henry scoffs slightly at this notion as it had become a typical expectation every single time he was home now so he just pulls back the red flannel shirt he wore and reveals the glock 19 that rested on his hip and he smiles over at his mother half-heartedly, “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

JJ just nods her head, staring at her son seriously in the eye as Emily watches on, a simple spectator with her mouth hanging agape and the boys are out the door in seconds. The brunette scoffs as soon as the door closes, “Oh nice, JJ, our 22-year-old son carries a pistol now.”

“Yeah, that’s right, he does,” JJ nods as she returns her eyes to the brunette’s. “Cause if you had actually supported Carrie when she wanted to follow us into the FBI, if you had ever shown her how to use a gun then maybe, just maybe we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Oh, that falls squarely on me then, huh?” the brunette grits her teeth. “Then it falls squarely on you that the girls came up to this cabin all by themselves when I didn’t want to let it happen for even a second. You trusted them to act like adults when they were still just kids, kids who get into trouble and who break into their mothers’ liquor cabinet because they can and get so drunk that they pass out, that they have to run outside to throw up.”

The blonde is shaking by the end of the accusatory sentence that Emily lobs her way and she was seeing red, most of the time JJ was level-headed and calm and could keep her composure under the hardest and most strenuous of distress. But right now her impulses get the better of her because she feels like she could cry but fuck it if she could cry anymore and she also wants to smack her wife upside the face for the words she had just allowed to slip from her mouth.

Instead, JJ grabs a nearby vase, one long forgotten about, one that had been a wedding present or maybe it was an anniversary gift but it honestly didn’t matter because it was all lost now. The younger woman grabs the ceramic regardless and chunks it past Emily where it collides rapturously with the wall and yet the brunette doesn’t even flinch. The blonde shouldn’t have been surprised as much, there wasn’t much that ever made the woman blink, not even staring at the dead body of their daughter had gotten beneath the calm, cold, callous, calculating and compartmentalizing skin of Emily fucking Prentiss, the cunt.

“We can sit here all day and play the blame game, Jennifer,” Emily says seriously, her flaring nostrils and heaving breath showing that maybe this confrontation was getting to her, if only slightly. “But what fucking good is that going to do, huh? It won’t bring her back, it won’t bring our daughter back.”

Jennifer Jareau laughs the most rueful laugh that has probably ever slipped from her mouth at this statement before she is back in her wife’s, at this rate soon-to-be ex-wife’s face, “And what fucking good does it do to keep all this shit posted up like it’s gonna bring her back? What good does justice do anyways? Or is it really just vengeance at this point, Emily?”

“That’s not fair, cause where is that innocent little JJ that I fell in love with all those years ago, huh?” Emily asks rhetorically. “Where is the woman that used to actually care to fight for justice because I haven’t seen her for a very long time now?”

“She grew up, Em, and you know this!” JJ shakes her head, not feeling like she has to justify anything to her wife anymore and is more than fed up with what always seems to become of them these days, every time they were together now. “You know what? I’m going for a walk.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get yourself killed,” Emily shoots off haphazardly, not really caring where this conversation led at this point.

“Oh, nice, Em, I’ll make sure to do that,” JJ replies with venom in her tone. “You know what? Your entire family hasn’t even been here an hour and you’ve already pushed us all away from you so I hope you’re real proud of yourself cause you're making me regret letting you convince me to come up here at all.”

With this JJ is out the door which she slams behind her and it’s now that Emily flinches because here she was all alone again in this isolated cabin and right back where she started.

“Real fucking nice, Prentiss,” she groans to herself as she goes to pick up the shattered remains of the vase that was probably a much bigger metaphor than she cared to dwell on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from "murder in the city" by the avett brothers.


	2. stopped listening the moment you spoke

The two blonde boys were down by the water, both lost in their own thoughts as the soothing sounds of the moving liquid and wilderness around them was doing anything but calming their thoughts. Maybe this place would never be the same, this place where they had learned to fish and where they had spent several Thanksgivings surrounded by their family, playing football and soccer in the yard. This place, even with the green and warmth of summer, would forever haunt them.

“I thought coming up here would help moms reconnect or something,” Michael says hesitantly but shrugs his shoulders regardless. It was true, the only reason he had been looking forward to this trip was to see his dark-haired mother and hopefully stage some sort of reconciliation between the blonde and the brunette.

“I don’t think there’s anything that can reconnect them at this point,” Henry says, tossing his line back out into the water with ease. “Not after all that happened with Carrie.”

“So you don’t think there’s ever a chance of them getting back together?” Michael asked, half-heartedly and more than afraid of the answer from his big brother.

“Not unless something big happens because right now, they’re just lost in it all,” Henry offers and it’s weak but it was the truth of the matter at hand. They had all fallen apart in some way or another and he knew his parents had fallen apart from each other. “I mean, aren’t we all though because I’m barely even graduating with my probation last year.”

Michael nods at this realizing this was also true. He himself had grown apart from his blonde mother this past year and had gravitated more towards Emily and his dad. He’s not really sure why that is, maybe it’s cause his mom took more to drinking wine, sitting in Carrie’s room and just crying so often that she hardly felt present in his life anymore. Maybe it’s more that she quit the FBI so easily after everything happened and no leads were found, he might never forgive her for giving up so easily.

The two young men just sit there in the silence, pondering all that had changed irrevocably in their lives and how nothing may never entirely return to normal. They could pretend though, they had just enough Jareau in them to do that with ease. Bottling it up to the point where the dam inevitably breaks.

“Hiya, boys,” the gruff voice seems to come out of nowhere from behind them and both Michael and Henry jump. The older boy’s hand seems to readily find the holster of the weapon on his hip as he stands at attention. Their eyes find the scruffy man with sandy hair and whiskers in a black t-shirt and khaki pants holding his hands up in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, take it easy there, partners.”

Henry stands in a readied defensive position facing the taller man who had a good three inches on the boy, not to mention higher ground. The man smiles easily but it made the two boys nothing but uneasy. The older boy finding his voice, trying to seem strong but it shakes a little as he asks, “Do we know you, sir?”

“What? You don’t remember old man Hastings?” the man asks with a hint of offended to his tone but he still wore a charming smile. “Well, I remember you; you’re Jareau and Prentiss’ boys, aren’t you?”

Michael was staring around his older brother, squinting slightly from the sun as he still set upon the rock, “You live around here, Mr. Hastings?”

“I live about four miles up the mountain,” the man said simply with a nod of his head as he talked through the tobacco thick in his lip. He turns his head slightly to spit some of the excess out and Michael grimaces at the roughness of the man.

JJ comes around the bend where the dirt trail leads to the edge of the water. She notices the man talking to her boys and she approaches with as strong of presence as she can manage. She lands behind Michael setting her hand on his shoulder and kisses him lightly upon the head to which the young boy easily pulls away and shrugs her off. "Anything biting, boys?"

The tall man watches the interaction between mother and son closely before he takes a step or two to extend his hand towards JJ, “Mrs. Jareau, was it? It’s good to see you again, under better circumstances of course.”

The blonde eyes the man for a moment before meeting his hand in a firm shake and a nod of her head, “Agent Jareau, Mrs. Prentiss, Jennifer, I answer to it all.”

“Alright then, Jennifer,” he nods, seeming to settle on the way it rolls off his tongue with ease and he licks his lips as he does so. “I’m sorry again, about what happened to your little girl. You and that wife of yours ever catch the bastard that did it?”

“No,” JJ tightens her jaw and grits her teeth a little as she speaks, trying to keep herself even. It was never easy when people had a million questions about what exactly had happened and the outcome of the events. “But that doesn’t mean we’re giving up hope.”

“Of course not,” Hastings says with a kind nod of his head, his eyes can’t seem to escape the blonde and she feels a discomfort come over her before Michael is suddenly standing, pulling in his line and stomps off back down the trail. Henry just stands there, his hand never quite leaving the pistol on his hip as he watches the man closely and he sees the man eyeing his mother much like a prize to be won.

“Well, we came up her to see mom so I guess we ought to get back to her,” Henry says as he eases in his tension to gather the fishing gear. He still never lets his eyes wander too far from the man as he turns back, letting one hand fall to the small of his mother's back. They both send farewell nods towards the man before they are back on their way up the winding trail.

They let the wind fall between them, not really even letting the man intertwine with their thoughts as they turn closer towards the cabin. JJ thinking how she still wasn’t entirely settled from her confrontation with her wife earlier and Henry simply wondering if any of them would escape these two days without further emotional wounds to drag back home with them.

“You and mom settle down after we left or did it only get worse?” Henry asks with apprehension, afraid he already knows the answer to his question.

JJ sighs, knowing all too well that she can’t keep the truth hidden from Henry because even from afar it seemed that her oldest always seemed to key in on the discord and havoc wreaking throughout his family. She steels herself as she replies, “Worse, I guess but I just don’t know what to do anymore, H, I mean, we’ve grown apart and see things differently now so what am I supposed to do?”

“You realize you’re asking for relationship advice from your 22-year-old, right?” Henry questions seriously and JJ sighs at the notion. He’s right, it is a little absurd. “All I know is that we all used to be happy and you and mom were so in love that it was sickening to look at some days but I have always searched for that kind of love... It's just since Carrie, I don’t think any of us have the answers anymore.”

JJ nods, accepting this answer because it was nothing but honest and she respected her son’s opinions and outlooks. She thinks about the strain it’s put on him, losing Carrie and the academic probation wearing on him so much that he was forced to break up with Jack Hotchner, who he had long been involved with since his senior year of high school. Hotch, JJ and Emily were all certain that they were gonna end up married someday but the last year has certainly seemed to take its toll and put a damper on that, amongst many other things.

“Have you talked to Jack recently?” JJ asks and it’s been a while since she had inquired about the boy because she wanted to give her son space but now seemed as good a time as any.

“He’s still post-grading at George Washington like Uncle Hotch,” Henry shrugged but there was a trace of bitterness to the boy’s tone as they walked along the path leading to the house. “But he’s got another boyfriend if that’s what you’re asking and I’ve got this thing with this girl from one of my classes.”

“This _thing_? I haven’t heard about any _thing_ with anyone,” JJ says with a slight confusion, shaking her head but maybe it was more offense that her son hadn't felt open enough to talk to her about this. “You never told me you were seeing someone else.”

“It’s a thing, we’re not seeing each other, we’re just fuck buddies,” Henry says with a roll of his eyes and emphasis in his words that puts JJ on edge, not used to hearing her son speak like this. He looks back briefly to gage her reaction and just shrugs his shoulders. “What do you care? You and Emily were fuck buddies long before you ever even broke up with dad.”

“Hey, that is not fair and you know it,” JJ protests as she grabs her son by the sleeve, effectively stopping him and turning him towards her. “That was a long time ago, H, and me and your dad have long worked through those issues, alright?”

“Oh, have you?” Henry remarks, bitterly. “Is that why he dates nineteen year olds now and can’t seem to keep his head on straight any more than the rest of us can?”

All the things the boy was saying made sense. Their family was anything but normal. Her and Emily had gotten involved while her and Will were together and then their son had come along. Things got complicated because Emily and JJ couldn’t stop seeing each other, in fact they never did until the point that JJ broke it off with Will when Henry was only two. From there the dysfunction only increased tenfold with Will still fathering Caroline and Michael all the same. It hadn't been any kind of normal by a stretch but they all seemed to make it work.

“Look, Henry, I am not judging you, alright,” JJ says emphatically, carefully because she knew something was eating at her son but just what she couldn’t quite tell. She wanted this to be easy but nothing was so simple anymore. “I just want to make sure that you’re being safe, that’s all.”

“I’m being safe but I guess it was a lot safer with Jack cause I couldn’t exactly get him pregnant now, could I?” Henry shoots back and heads towards the house on his own, faster now, leaving no room for further discussion and JJ is left reeling. It seemed that she was losing every battle she fought for the day and she wasn’t sure how to handle it.

So the blonde just followed the boy inside as he stomped through the cabin, she notes that Michael is in the dining room area, looking a little too closely at the details of the case that she has tried so hard not to deal with herself. Emily was in the kitchen as Henry started to pass.

“Hey, did you catch anything?” she asks lightly but the young man just passes her in a huff and slams the door to the bedroom which makes her jump. She meets JJ’s eyes in the living area, despite everything they still had a language when it came to their children and wide eyes with eyebrows raised were never a good sign. So she merely grumbles, “Well, _fuck me_ then.”

“What are you cooking?” JJ asks as she enters the kitchen, keeping a safe distance from the brunette. They had to be civil, she knew even though it was harder than usual at the moment. She posts up by the kitchen table where she is also able to keep an eye on Michael who seems mesmerized and lost in the dining room adjacent to them. “It smells great.”

“Carbonara a la Rossi,” Emily says with a slight chuckle and a shake of her head. Thinking of the man who had taught them all how to make the dish. “I don’t know that I quite honed the old man’s spirit but I like to think he’d be proud of the effort.”

“That was Carrie’s favorite and she always loved your version better because it felt like an actual meal instead of just an appetizer,” JJ peruses the memory with a laugh. Emily leans against the counter and sips her glass of red and then sighs. The blonde sees the bittersweet emotions playing in her wife’s eyes as she stares into them and the brunette simply purses her lips.

“I’ll drink to that,” Emily says as she finishes off the drink and goes to grab another glass, not even needing to ask the blonde because she already knew the woman needed a drink as much as she did. Reliving the good memories was sometimes the worst part of it all. She pours the two glasses and then walks over to hand the glass to JJ.

Their hands touch and linger as the glass is passed off and the younger woman nods her head in appreciation, “Thank you, you already knew.”

“After twenty years, you pick up a thing or two,” Emily says with a shrug and a light smile before her face grows more serious. She wonders how they were able to do this, one minute at each other’s throat and the next sipping wine like nothing had happened. “How was your walk?”

“Uh, it was fine, walked down to see the boys and ran into, uh, Hastings I think his name was,” JJ says as she struggles to remember all the man said. “He lives in the next cabin up I believe, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh, yeah, him,” Emily says with a roll of her eyes. “He’s the one that’s always shooting things because I swear to god this place would actually be peaceful sometimes if he was to lay off the target practice.”

“Mm,” JJ says as she sips her wine but her eyes fall back on her youngest child, still lost in the other room but seeming to be scouring a file instead of just wandering. She looks back at the brunette and tilts her head her son’s way with an inquiring expression. “Has he been doing that since he got back?”

“Yeah, yeah, he asked if I minded that he go through the case stuff,” Emily says with a shrug as she sits down at the kitchen table. “I said I didn’t, I mean him and Henry weren’t exactly ready to face what happened last year so I figured it might be therapeutic to let him sort it out while he’s up here again.”

“Is it really a good idea though?” JJ asks skeptically as she turned back to look at her wife, her brow furrows in concern. “He’s so young--”

“Jen, how old were you when you started looking into and investigating why your sister would do what she did to herself?” Emily inquires seriously, looking up at the blonde who was hovering over her slightly as her hand fell to the chair before her.

“Em, this is different,” JJ starts to protest. “Rosaline wasn’t murdered and r--”

“Is it really that different, Jay?” Emily relays with a shake of her head. “You and Michael both lost your sisters and now he’s just trying to make sense of it anyway that he can.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense, Emily,” JJ says suddenly angry, slamming her glasses down on the table and leaning on the chair intently, a little closer to her wife. “Suicide, murder, rape, none of it makes any sense and there are no answers to be found, not in any of it.”

Emily sighs and leans back in her chair, her eyes roam back to the dining room and she notices Michael, even with his back turned away from them has hesitated in his actions. His head slightly turned towards the kitchen and he had clearly heard what his blonde mother had just declared. She looks back up and meets the blue eyes of her wife earnestly.

“Our son is doing everything he can to come to grips with the fact that his sister is dead,” the older woman says through gritted teeth as quietly as she can manage. “And if looking for answers in those case files is how he chooses to do it then I am fine with that and I’ll be damned if you try to stop him.”

JJ nods her head at this, maybe she knows her wife is right so she simply picks the wine glass back up and sips. Knowing her wife well enough to know she wasn't going to fight her on the matter further, Emily gets up from her seat, seemingly satisfied with the resolution and starts to head back to tend to the food still cooking. The blonde sets the glass back down easily and starts to make her way into the dining room but the older woman catches her before she can.

“JJ, I swear to god,” the brunette warns in a curt tone that didn’t leave much room for argument.

“I’m just gonna talk to him,” JJ says slightly defensive, her hands outstretched in surrender. “I promise.”

Emily just tilts her head with a flick of her eyelashes and tightens her lips together but she doesn’t fight her wife. She doesn't want this weekend to be an endless stream of fights between the family. She just prays that the notion won’t do more harm than good.

The blonde easily makes her way into the dining room but a wave hits and overwhelms her slightly as she does. All the details of Caroline’s case would never get easier. It’s why she left the FBI in the first place, she could handle when the victims were people she had no connection to ultimately but now, this was as close as they could ever come. And it was the one case they just couldn’t solve. It was all too much to handle.

She watches Michael reeling with the same emotional turmoil and overwhelming totality of even the smallest detail that his sister’s murder entailed. His young mind running ninety-to-nothing with all the hope and heartbreak. She sits next to him, hoping that this will be enough.

“What, momma?” Michael asks shortly, not really wanting to deal with his blonde mother at this exact moment. He just wanted to be left to skew over the detail, wallow and drown in all that he could take in.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, son?” JJ asks softly, no louder than a whisper now.

“Maybe I’m doing this cause someone has to,” Michael protests, standing up with the anger he felt setting in his bones. “Lord knows you’re not doing anything to help mom find the asshole who did this!”

“That’s not fair because I already tried, Michael,” JJ says evenly, still seated in the small area. She looks around the room again, blue eyes roaming what felt like the ghost that haunted her. “There is nothing here, Michael, there are no answers in this room because me and your mom are professionals, this is what we did for over thirty years of our lives and so we know when there is something to go on, we know when there’s hope and we also know when there’s not.”

“Well, that doesn’t stop mom from trying, from not giving up hope,” Michael argues and honestly he was sick of hearing this from the woman. He was sick of her offering excuses as to why there was nothing to be done. He would be damned if there was nothing to be done to gain justice for his sister. “You’re just scared because you can’t face the fact that Carrie is actually dead!”

“Hey, no, you don’t think I know that, Michael?” JJ protests, standing up now from her seated position, her ire and passion propelling her forward towards her son. “You don’t think I feel it every second of every day that your sister is not here? You think I don’t realize that my child, my daughter who I gave birth to and raised and loved for eighteen years is gone? What is wrong with you?”

Michael bows his head a little ashamed at being the reason for his mother’s outburst but he still felt it was true in some ways. He felt his mother pulling away or maybe it was running because here was Emily, facing the truth every day and choosing to try and do something about it. JJ just sat at home, in her suburban bliss or maybe it was a nightmare but either way, she wasn’t dealing with it. Not at all.

“You know, I’ve been where you are, son, and I’ve been through this process even before Carrie,” JJ says solemnly, her hand going to the rivet set between her brows, she felt at a loss to get through to the boy. “I was fifteen when I started really diving into and investigating why the hell my sister would have ever killed herself, why she would leave this earth without giving me an explanation, why would she abandon me when I needed her most and you know what? I never got answers.”

“I’m not you, momma, and this is not _your_ sister, it’s _mine_ and I won’t let the answers that are all right here slip past me,” Michael says seriously and JJ sighs. She knows she’s not gonna be able to get through to that stubborn brain that was some kind odd cocktail of Will, Emily’s and her own determination. With nature and nurture brewing together to make one hell of a storm inside this boy, she knew he wouldn’t let it go and never give it up because at one point in time, they all were the same way. Hell, Emily still wasn’t giving up despite the fact that everything was seemingly against them at this point.

“Okay, son, do what you have to do and I’ll be here if you need me,” JJ finally reasons, there wasn’t much that she could do at this moment if the boy wasn’t going to let her in and was going to fight her every damn inch of the way. She figures that if Michael was so much, and he very much was, like Emily then there was nothing to be done. “But if you need to fall apart, I hope you know that both your mom and I, and even Henry, are here for you, Michael.”

The dirty blonde headed boy just rolls his eyes and sits back down, opening back the file and simply ignoring what his mother had to say. It was the typical teenager’s response but it didn’t keep it from hurting JJ more than she’d care to admit. He simply mumbles, “I’ll be fine.”

And JJ has never hoped for something to be more true in her life but only time would tell.

It wasn’t long before the entire family were all gathered together in the little kitchen area and seated around the table, enjoying their diner in a tension laced silence. Emily was set at the head of the table with her back to the dining room, JJ and Michael on either side of her, picking at their food with their heads down. Henry, however, was set directly across from her.

The eldest boy was on edge in the awkward air, his foot bouncing anxiously beneath the table. He was trying desperately to keep his mouth shut and be thankful for the meal that his mother had prepared for him. His eyes wander around the table however, met with nothing but the cold faces of his family. With the silence, his blue eyes were left to roam the little cabin.

Yet more unsettling is that his irises can’t help but seem to fall on one small index card that was posted in the dining room across the way. His eyes shifting to and staring into the face of the blood red paper with the message that seemed to rear its head at the most inopportune times scrawled across it in bold, black lettering. **_RAPED WHILE DYING_**.

After about the fifth time that his eyes had landed there in the sobering silence, he drops his fork, shoves his plate away and stands vehemently. Emily, JJ and Michael’s eyes are all torn from their own plates at the distraction, their heads snapping up at Henry’s sudden movement. Confusion laces their faces and expressions as they stare at the man.

“Wow, it would really be great to sit down and enjoy a dinner together with my family without this shit staring me in the face,” the boy says in an outburst, gesturing towards the room tucked away behind Emily. “Cause if there wasn’t two seconds in a day when I _wasn’t_ thinking about her and how she _died_ , it’s got to be staring me in the face while I eat pasta too.”

“Henry…” JJ starts to say but the blonde boy is too quick in his response.

“No, cause as much as a person might have tried to avoid the details of what happened cause he didn’t think it would _do_ any good and he didn’t think he could _bear_ it,” Henry says. “It’s nice to have it scrawled across the dining room and laid out in the exact details of her last moments, that it wasn’t enough that she was _raped_ and it wasn’t enough that she _died_ , no, _raped while dying_ so thanks for that.”

“We gave you the police reports, Henry,” Emily says softly while looking up at her son and seeing just how upset he was, how he was not dealing with this, much in the same way of his blonde mother. He always seemed to favor his blonde mother and sometimes in the worst ways possible.

“I didn’t read them,” Henry says with a shake of his head. “I’m depressed enough as it fucking is so thanks but no thanks.”

And with that Henry storms out of the room and slams the door of his bedroom. JJ jumps at the sound while Emily just stares. Michael looks off into the direction that his brother had just gone, shaking his head slightly and scoffing. He saw it differently. They all saw the events with a different outlook. So they just let it lie and hoped that it wouldn’t all come crumbling down on them more than it already was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry’s outburst at the end of the chapter comes from “three billboards outside ebbing, missouri” and was not mean as plagiarism, ect. thank you.
> 
> the title of this chapter comes from "talking in code" by margot & the nuclear so and so's.


	3. so love me in disguise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright so READ carefully, folks. i struggled a lot myself with my own PTSD while even writing this chapter so i am putting a very serious WARNING here.
> 
> this chapter contains explicit sexual content that is mixed with brief violent imagery. i am putting a warning here ahead of time to let you know that this chapter is potentially an extreme trigger for abuse and rape. proceed with caution... or as the television would say, viewer discretion is advised.

Emily had just completed doing the dishes and she was pouring herself yet another glass of wine. The house was relatively quiet now as Henry had retired during dinner and hadn’t made so much as a peep since. All the while Michael had taken some of the files into his own room to scour with the dark-haired woman’s permission. JJ had gone into the bedroom to sort some things but was now returning to the kitchen.

The blonde approaches the counter next to her wife. She drops the small ceramic urn that held all that remained of their daughter. They both just stare at the item between them. Emily managing to pass off the glass of wine she had topped off for JJ and then she sighs.

“So that’s it, huh?” Emily asks and it’s not a very real question because obviously that was it. This was their daughter. She was content in the fact that JJ had readily agreed to handle all that encompassed laying their daughter to rest. They all knew that was the real reason they had all reconvened at the cabin cause despite it being the place where she died, it was also one of Caroline’s favorite places in the world.

“Yeah,” is all JJ can manage to sigh as she downs the content of the wine glass all too quickly and reaches for the bottle over Emily and pours yet another heavy portion.

“I still don’t know that I agree that you had her cremated,” Emily says snidely as she sips her own wine, still simply staring at the small dark blue urn. JJ takes in a deep breath before replying.

“We are not getting into that again, Em,” JJ warns seriously. “Carrie always talked about wanting to be cremated, just like you want to be and I was not gonna stand by and not honor my daughter’s wishes.”

“I can’t get the image out of my head,” Emily says, bracing her hands on the counter, her head downcast and shaking from side to side. “The thought of burning away the last shred of evidence that could help us get the motherfucker who did this to her.”

“There was nothing left, Em,” JJ offers because she knows it’s the truth. “They got every single shred of DNA and forensics they could off her, they wiped her clean and it still hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”

Emily downs the rest of her own glass and drinks straight from the bottle at the thoughts haunting her, killing the last of it all together. She can’t believe between the two of them that they had killed two separate bottles. Well, she can but doesn’t dwell on it.

“I’m going to bed because this day has already been long enough,” JJ says as she finishes her glass, setting it in the sink and rolls her neck that is filled with tension. “We both know that tomorrow is destined to be worse and we need to be ready when Will gets here in the morning.”

JJ nods and then makes her way to the bedroom while Emily wanders to the front door where she makes sure it's locked and deadbolted tight. This had become a staple in Emily's routine since moving to the cabin and this night would not be any different.

Emily then joins her wife in the room and puts on her old sweat pants and shirt easily. She tries desperately to avoid the fact that JJ is shedding layer after layer of clothing as she still sleeps very much naked. It had been a thing throughout her pregnancies but after Caroline was born, it became standard for the woman. She had spent a portion of her pregnancy in Afghanistan as well. So too much heat and JJ would combust in a fiery rage of hormones. Not that JJ sleeping completely nude didn’t almost always do the same for the brunette woman. She had a feeling that these days, those feelings were very different. The expanse between them was seemingly too wide.

JJ is lost in thoughts of her own as she rids herself of each article from her skin. She thinks about how natural it still is for her to feel comfortable around the brunette woman. Though the majority of her time was now spent angry with the woman, there was still something easy in the way they maneuvered as a unit. Sometimes she missed the older woman but thinking about how tempered they had gotten earlier didn’t make it easy to dwell on.

She eases beneath Emily’s sheets and the smell of the woman is overwhelming her senses now. As she turns away from the other woman onto her side, she had forgotten what the comfort of this woman felt like cause even after Caroline had died, she still felt like her wife was one of the only things that had kept her sane. She felt more than knew the fact that she had not done the same for the brunette, maybe that’s why they were miles away from each other now. But right now, a year after everything, she felt herself needing that comfort more than ever.

The blonde felt Emily get in the bed, her body sinking into the mattress slightly and JJ needed to feel this woman sinking into her skin. She needed this woman overpowering her and making her feel everything and nothing all at once, to overpower the endless thoughts that brought her under so often. With every shift and shake of the other woman, JJ’s body does the same.

The younger woman can’t stand the feeling anymore so she lays flat on her back, mirroring the other woman’s position in the bed now. She knew Emily wasn’t asleep because it was rare that the brunette fell asleep before her or even gained more than a few hours of shut eye. JJ grabs Emily’s right hand that lay over her stomach, she feels the hesitation from the other woman but she wasn’t exactly fighting it. She rolls back over on her side facing away from her wife but takes Emily along with her this time.

“I need you to…” JJ starts to say in a voice, nothing above a mere whisper. “Just hold me.”

JJ feels Emily sigh but doesn’t pull away at all instead she embraces the younger woman tighter. But now every breath that was released from the woman was lining and falling upon the blonde’s neck, it was sending shivers down her spine. Every movement mixing with JJ’s nerves, the tightening of her wife’s fingers against her taut abdomen and the warmth of her arms had JJ wetter than she had been in the entire year since she had lost her daughter.

It makes her feel alive and wanton, her breath picking up beyond her own consent. She was restless and her body would never let her sleep at this rate. Not with every nerve in her body sending signals to the one place that she had so readily ignored for so long and god was it distracting. Just feeling Emily’s hand start to roam around in circles on her stomach had her in pieces and on edge. She knows it had been too long since she had felt like this. She doesn’t know if there’s a line here now, she doesn’t know if she was allowed to cross it cause whether invisible or not, she knew it was there between them.

But this was still her wife, this was still the woman who she loved beyond all shadow of doubts, who she would die for and who she would still choose to spend the rest of her life with. Maybe the separation hadn’t exactly been JJ’s doing, maybe it had just been Emily’s out, her chance to run because things had gotten so close to the breaking point for both of them that it was a necessity. But now, she didn’t care because Emily Prentiss was breathing down her neck, every once in a while sighing a little heavier and she was a ghost upon her skin. JJ feels the older woman scoot a little closer, lining her bare back with the heat of her body. And that was it.

The blonde grabs ahold of her wife’s right hand that she had already had her own covering, she trails it lower, so slowly as to not frighten or startle her wife at the idea. Because she needed it, she needed this like air in her lungs, like water to her mouth. JJ was begging for it and she needed to be satiated, she’s not sure that there would be anything to stop her now.

When she leads her wife’s fingers through the thin lining of hair, the tips dipping into the wetness that had pooled there and exactly where she needed her, they both groan. “Oh _god_ ,” JJ lets the words fall from her mouth like a plea, her head burying itself slightly more into the pillow that her head rested itself on.

Emily doesn’t exactly move for a millisecond but the pressure is there and she feels the brunette’s mouth land upon her neck, open and hot and wet. Exactly the way that JJ was feeling right now. The younger woman keens when she feels Emily’s fingers start to make decisions all on their own. And they weren’t soft and sensitive touches anymore, no but her wife's fingers moving against her with vigor was precisely what she needed.

“Fuck, Em, please,” JJ begs and it’s not uncharacteristic of her to beg. Just not this soon, she had never felt this keyed up with so little foreplay before. But Emily goddamn Prentiss’ fingers were roughly playing with her clit, rubbing hard in circles and pinching every once in a while and it set her body aflame. The woman was not letting up however, not giving her what exactly she was begging for.

She suddenly swipes her wife’s hand away, shoving the woman back on the bed and JJ flips herself over and lands on top of the brunette so easily and with so much frustration. Then Emily’s fingers find her center again and JJ whimpers with it. Her entire body was shaking in some form or another and writhing against her wife’s hand as it made traces along her center roughly. She felt Emily’s fingers near her entrance and she grabs ahold of Emily’s shoulders so roughly, she’s almost certain that the woman could disappear into the sheets beneath her. But the older woman still does not give her what she needs.

No, Emily Prentiss knew what she was doing when it came to fucking her wife and she knew the longer she drew this out, the wetter she’d have JJ and the harder she would come. In fact, Emily Prentiss in this moment was actually a little terrified by what had suddenly come over the younger woman. The way JJ was shaking was not a normal occurrence but she grabs JJ’s wrist with her free hand as it holds her down. She wants to make sure that the woman was steady as she played with her.

She knew JJ could only come with her tongue if she wasn’t penetrated so the fact that Emily keeps making endless laps from her entrance all the way back to her clit with her fingers was excruciating for the blonde. She’s not sure why but the thought of torturing this woman in the best ways possible was the most wonderful feeling in the world to her right now.

Then she feels JJ’s hand that she is not holding land at the lining of hair at her forehead, roughly scraping their way through her scalp and grab her by the dark tresses there. JJ leans over so she is face to face with the brunette. She is under no illusion that the blonde would kiss her because they don’t do that anymore. That was the unspoken line, if they were being honest.

So it really isn’t too much of a surprise when JJ grits her teeth and spits, “Prentiss, I need you to fuck the living hell out of me right now or so help me god…”

“Like this?” Emily whispers through her own tight lips. She finds JJ’s entrance swiftly and with no hesitation her fingers slam into the younger woman cause god, was JJ wet for her and there was no resistance as she did so. JJ gasps and nearly collapses upon the intrusion however, her pert breast at attention against Emily’s still clothed chest.

Due to the fact that JJ was no longer just shaking but absolutely quivering at the feeling of her wife roughly fucking her like there’s no tomorrow, Emily takes it upon herself to flip their positions and they end up horizontal on the king sized mattress. Neither one of them can remember the last time they had fucked like this, with complete and total abandon.

All the touches they had shared in the last year were so few and far between and so often mixed with tears and gentle traces on skin that were so far removed from what they were doing now. The sounds and the smell mixing in the room are intoxicating. The soft slap of skin every time Emily reentered her again and again, curling her fingers just right. JJ’s nails finding their way up the back of Emily’s shirt and scraping along any skin they could possibly find.

The blonde was an absolute mess, sprawled out over the sheets, wet and mewling for every single finger that Emily added and the impossible mix of pain and pleasure that she found there. She was so close but she wasn’t there yet despite the fact that her wife was three fingers deep and her thumb was roughly toying with her clit. It wasn’t enough. The pain wasn’t enough for the younger woman.

So JJ who was so lost in the moment and the feeling of her wife that she grabs Emily’s free hand and wraps the nimble fingers of the woman that were capable of so much around her delicate neck. With a whisper, she utters, “Choke me, I need to feel it.”

The feeling in Emily’s bones is ravenous; she feels the anger and torment in her soul leak through her nerves and muscles as she squeezed tight around her wife’s throat. Her fingers never slow as they strike just the right chord inside of the younger woman. And JJ was close, the way she was seeping and dripping, practically drenching Emily’s digits and moaning with such abandon made it obvious.

The younger woman’s fingers take it upon themselves to wrap around and meet Emily’s lining her neck, she encourages her to hold even tighter but now it is the brunette who is shaking. Looking into the deepened blue nearly grey eyes of her wife in the dark was bringing up the flashes of the _blue hazel_ that she hadn’t seen anywhere else for a year behind her own chocolate irises.

JJ’s blonde tresses splayed out on the mattress are flashes of _dark blonde hair lining the dirt as she squirms and fights with every breath that remained in her lungs_.

Every strangled moan from JJ was _a scream from the bloodied red lips of their daughter_.

Every movement was _the bruised body of a teenager that battled to sustain its life_.

Now in the shadow of the moonlight coming through the window, with unsteady hands, Emily lifts JJ by the neck and slams her back into the bed. That's when JJ finally comes with fingers curling inside of her and limbs indenting into her skin in more places than one that she knows instinctively will leave a mark. Emily feels that the woman had fallen over the edge but it doesn’t matter as she pulls out of the woman vehemently. She storms off the bed and is out of the room within seconds.

JJ’s body is torn by the whiplash; the ecstasy of the feeling just seconds ago is overwhelmed by the notion and realization that something was very wrong. She had seen in the glaze of Emily’s stare that she had escaped elsewhere. Her mind was not on her wife and JJ was terrified to know exactly where that dark mind had fled to in those rapturous moments. She couldn’t move however, either from the frenzy that still shamefully set her nerves alight or the fear that left her lying stock still on the mattress.

With her rapid exit, Emily had managed to straighten her clothing and make it into the kitchen. It’s here she washes her hands of what almost feels like blood. She knows they’re relatively clean of most any wrongdoing but the fact that her mind had just played such intense tricks on her in the heat of such an intimate moment left the guilt behind with them. Thoughts running like rapids in her mind were causing her eyes to dart around the room, finding no solace and there was a shake that still racked her bones.

She grabs one of the glasses that she had washed earlier after dinner and runs the water of the faucet into it. Emily luxuriously drinks the cool liquid hoping it would calm the fire set inside of her. She had been so caught up in actually enjoying a moment with her wife that she figures it was standard fare for her mind to start gravitating back to the dark, painful and unbearable thoughts that trouble her.

That’s when her senses seem to return to her beyond the heighten mix of arousal, both sexual and the paranoia. The sounds of what she thinks is the front door creaking and then the sound of the screen door slamming shut while it catches the wind gravitates through the house like a shockwave. Already on the edge, Emily drops the glass of water and the glass shatters to the floor.

The brunette makes her way quietly and easily to one of the tables in the living area, when she enters the room she sees the door that she had so readily locked earlier now wide open. She grabs the Heckler & Koch P2000SK pistol from the lockbox inside the side table and makes her way slowly to the door and clears the area much like so many instances before. Something felt different this time however.

After landing on the front porch with little activity in the wooded area and with no signs of forces entry, she summarizes that the door was opened from inside the cabin. With this thought, she bounds her way back into the house through the living area, past the kitchen into the small hallway that lead to the bedrooms. Henry’s room is first and as she opens the door, she finds the young man lying on his side, back to the door and fast asleep. She sighs with only a second's worth of relief.

A sinking feeling sets into her bones however as she approaches the cracked bedroom door that her youngest son usually occupies and as she enters, she finds that the space has been abandoned by Michael entirely. His disheveled sheets tell her that he had been asleep at some point but was no longer there. Her eyes go wide at the sight and for the second time in just over a year’s time, Emily Prentiss is absolutely stricken with terror and her nerves shoot into a state of absolute panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from "impossible" by mothxr.


	4. up in the woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long to update, folks, but my life is a mess.

The brunette woman returns to her bedroom in a flash. JJ who was still awake was sitting up, covered this time by a sheet. She watches Emily enter the room in a frantic turn. In her unawareness, the blonde believes it is due what happened between them. She’s not even paying attention to the pistol in her wife’s hand due to being lost in her thoughts over the previous events earlier that night.

“Em, we need to talk about-” JJ starts but is cut off by Emily’s hand being outstretched towards her. The older woman’s quick movements and wide eyes stopping only long enough to stare into the blue seriously.

“JJ, get dressed,” the brunette says quickly. “Michael’s not in his room and the front door was left wide open so we have to find our son.”

“Wait, what?” JJ asks emphatically but she is up and out of the bed in a second’s time and she starts to feel the shakiness return as she grabs the clothes that she had rid herself of earlier. She throws on a jacket and reaches into the bag she had brought. She finds the glock 26 that she always keeps on her despite not being in the FBI anymore. Yes, old habits do die hard.

Emily grabs her coat and slips on the boots she often adorned around the property. She watches as JJ readies the pistol that she hasn’t used in nearly eight months now. JJ nods her head towards her wife. They don’t need words to confirm that neither one would stop until Michael was found. It had been the same with Carrie, only this time, they hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

“Why would he leave?” Emily asks, as JJ laces her shoes and is preparing herself to leave. “He was clearly asleep earlier cause his bed looks slept in so I don't know what could've happened.”

“I mean, I know he was upset with me earlier but,” JJ says with a shake of her head, before a thought dawns on her. “Wait, do you remember right after Carrie, how he had that issue with sleepwalking?”

“Oh God,” Emily groans but nods her head, her hand going to her forehead with worry. “So coming up here brought all those emotions back and he’s sleepwalking again.”

“He’s probably doesn’t even realize where he is,” JJ says and Emily starts to head towards the door of the bedroom with the blonde following. As they make their way into the hallway, they nearly run smack into Henry who is standing there, already dressed and pistol on his hip. He had heard his mothers' conversation and had never dressed himself faster. They hadn't allowed him to be apart of the search last summer for his sister and he'd be damned if it happened again.

“No, you’re not coming with us, H,” Emily says and her voice has a sense of finality but Henry already knew what would come from his brunette mother.

“You can’t say no because we can spread out and have a wider search and you know that, mom,” Henry says seriously, adjusting the glasses on his face again. “I’m coming with you and there’s nothing you’re gonna do to stop me this time.”

JJ and Emily’s eyes meet in some kind of conversation, the brunette skeptical but the blonde is simply nodding her head in agreement with the boy. Emily finally relents after a minute, “Alright, get your coat.”

Before they know it, all three members of the family are out the door and each instinctively going their own way. Emily takes the path that leads towards the water. Her gun and flashlight at the ready much like so many other times and cases before.

JJ takes the lining of trees that will eventually lead to the plateau where their daughter was found. She hopes that the outcome now will not leave the family in pieces once again. Her nerves are on edge and the darkness of the wilderness was not helping matters.

Henry has a sinking feeling as he follows a path that leads up behind the house. If he remembered correctly, this was the path that leads to Hastings’ house farther up. He may not remember the man but he remembers the old cabin in the woods that used to be abandoned. Him, Caroline and Michael had frequented it as children and loved to play on the tire swing posted outside of it.

As Emily follows the path and finds no signs of her son anywhere, she feels the tricks start turning over in her mind again without her consent. She remembers a conversation that Caroline had brought up as they walked together along this very path of the river while they were all gathered together their last Thanksgiving here as a family.

_The dirty blonde haired girl was ringing her fingers nervously as she and her brunette mother walked away from the house. She had watched as her blonde mother and the brunette had kissed and shared smiles. JJ was sweaty from the intense game of football that she, Will, Henry and Michael were all playing. Carrie and Emily were not exactly the sporty types so they watched before the teenaged girl asked if they could take a walk to talk. Emily hadn’t missed the two thumbs up that JJ had sent their daughter as encouragement._

_Emily was afraid she knew exactly what this conversation would entail and she was dreading it. She had seen Caroline shift from the typical teenage girl who was rebelling against her parents, who liked to wear leather and smoke cigarettes and pot, stay out past curfew and just overall be a pain in Emily and JJ’s ass. But the brunette had also watched her daughter mature in the last year. After one of her friend’s had overdosed on pills that had been the moment when Caroline Jareau Prentiss had started taking her life seriously. And as tragic as it was, the two FBI agents couldn't have been more grateful for it._

_“Alright, Carrie, you said you wanted to talk,” Emily starts because she sees from the tension her daughter held that she was worried about how this conversation would go. “We’ve been walking for a bit now so are you going to talk to me or what?”_

_That’s when the young girl stops and then turns towards her mother, the older woman is a little thrown by the determination set in her daughter’s face and it almost frightens the BAU Unit Chief. And rightfully so as Carrie's words start spilling out fast, “So, um, me and mom have been talking and she’s been hella supportive of my decision but we both knew that you would be the one with the problem with this so she told me that I should talk to you about it and um…”_

_“Whoa, Carrie, I need you slow down,” Emily says as she blinks heavily and tries to take in the rapid fire information that was coming her way. Sometimes she swears her children inherited a Reid gene somewhere or maybe that was just nurture playing its part. “I need you to speak slower and explain.”_

_“I want to join the FBI after college,” Carrie says quickly as her eyes shut and she was nearly holding her breath now. She was terrified because JJ had warned her that her mother might not take this news well. “So I was wondering if you and momma could maybe start training me a little now so I can be prepared for when I enter the academy.”_

_“Carrie… you just turned eighteen,” Emily sighs, this was what she had been afraid of. She had seen her daughter and JJ talking over and discussing cases but she had not thought that it had gotten this far. “You don’t know what you want right now.”_

_“That’s not fair,” Carrie protests and she seems a little upset to truly gage her mother’s reaction and reasoning. “You didn’t tell Henry that when he decided what he wanted to do.”_

_“Your brother is pre-law at Georgetown,” Emily says emphatically. “That’s a little different from joining the FBI and being out in the field.”_

_“Oh, so what, I’m not good enough to join your precious little FBI?” Carrie says as tears start to appear in her eyes, more than a little hurt at what she thought her mother was implying. The girl's reaction was already solidifying what Emily already knew to be true. Her daughter was not mature enough yet._

_“I didn’t say that, Carrie,” the brunette offers, trying to keep herself calm because she knew this conversation was already heading in the wrong direction. “I just want you to be sure before I start trying to teach you things that I don’t know that you’re ready for right now.”_

_“I don’t even know what field I want to be in yet,” Carrie says and she hopes this eases her mother’s worry on the matter. “So I might not ever actually need to hold a gun or bust down a door but I just want to be prepared for if I do.”_

_“And I get that, I do,” Emily says calmly as she approaches her daughter, her hands falling on her daughter’s biceps and squeezes what she hopes to be reassuringly. “I just think you’re a little young to handle it right now, so let’s get you through your first year of college and if you’re still sure, then we will discuss it again.”_

_“Momma was right,” Carrie says with a shake of her head, tears starting to stream down her face more out of anger than anything. “You just don’t understand.”_

_With this Carrie shrugs out of her mother’s grip and is storming back towards the cabin and Emily sighs. She can’t believe JJ would have told her daughter that she wouldn’t understand. I mean, she understands it. Hell, she had been there herself fighting her mother the entire way into the academy and that had ultimately been the thing that had pushed her through. Maybe it would do the same for Carrie but she knows she needs to find a way to fix this before the situation gets worse._

_She just couldn’t exactly bear the thought of Carrie experiencing the same sort of hell that she had as a young agent. The same kind of torture that both her mothers’ had experienced during their time with the FBI was not a comforting thought to a mother of a teenaged girl who was growing up all too quickly._

In the darkness and still silence of the forest, with only the sounds of the water to guide her, Emily Prentiss pushes herself forward. She was more determined than ever to find her son and bring him home safe. She would be damned if she lost another child. She could not bear it.

JJ had managed up the mountain faster than she thought possible, her eyes roaming the expanse of the woods but nothing visible and no signs of life short of the animals that it held. She makes her way two miles to the plateau and nothing. She figures that Michael couldn’t have gotten this far especially if he was asleep and the fact that the trail seemed to show no recent activity tells her she was not on the correct path. So she cuts across and starts heading in the direction that she knew Henry had lead. She didn’t want another one of her sons out here alone, one was enough.

Henry was nearly four miles up the mountain and panting harder the higher the elevation went. He was grateful that he had the heavy duty, bright Maglite to guide him. Sometimes it truly paid off having two FBI agents and a detective for parents. He felt uneasy as he went though and he knew he was closer to the house now. It was hard to tell whether he was on the right path. His mothers had once told him how to know if a trail had been used recently so he leans on their teachings.

Following the path most used, Henry approaches what he knows is the old cabin with the tire swing. He hopes he isn’t blindly following a dead lead but he knows he has to hope for the best of outcomes. His brother couldn’t have been gone that long, right? Could he have wandered this far up the mountain? His brain a whirlwind of questions but he knows his mothers would’ve let him know if they had found him.

Suddenly the sound of a familiar rough voice is crawling through his ears and it startles him when he hears the words, “What are you doing on that swing, boy?!”

He is only feet away from the clearing to Hastings' cabin, he knows the voice belongs to the man they had encountered earlier that day. Henry makes his way faster through the clearing and that’s when he sees the eerie shadows of his scrawny little brother and the tall military build of Hastings outlined near that old tire. He hesitates as he sees Hastings holding a weapon, and it looks to be a pistol. The 22-year-old is panicking slightly but his feet move forward slowly. His own pistol aimed at the ready.

Hastings grabs Michael by the collar of his t-shirt, the gun is now in the young boy’s face but there is no sign that the teenager is neither awake nor aware of what is happening. “You think you can just stumble on people’s property and it’s okay?” the man asks as he holds Michael closer, completely manhandling the boy.

“Well, I’m gonna show you what happens when people come up here uninvited,” Hastings relays with anger. He grabs Michael by the back of his neck and slams him headfirst into the tire. Michael’s head bouncing off of it in a brutal way as he falls to the ground. Despite the blow, he seems to come to but in a daze. Hastings hovering over the boy, he grabs his collar again. “What are you drunk or something too? Like that whore of a sister of yours was…”

JJ had made it so far to hear Hastings' angry tone as he talked to what she presumed to be her son and she makes it through the clearing just in time to see Michael’s body falling to the ground. The blonde sees Henry approaching faster as well. She can’t exactly hear what Hastings is saying to her son as she quickly makes her way over while her adrenaline is pumping faster than she's ever felt it. She and Henry arrive at about the same time and as she levels her glock at Hastings who is hovered over her son, she swipes Henry’s own weapon down towards the ground. Not wanting him to be the one to have to deal with this.

“Drop the gun, Hastings, and step away from my son,” JJ says, her voice as serious as a heart attack. It had been the voice used in many confrontations with countless unsubs prior. Hastings looks up at the blonde and he has a smile lacing his features now. He raises his hands in surrender and places the gun around the back of his pants.

Henry goes to recover and check on his brother as JJ and Hastings are eye-to-eye, her gun still leveled at him. She’s not sure that this man wouldn’t do anything else or what exactly he was capable of but she eases her gun away.

“What the hell is your boy doing up here, stumbling on my property, drunk, Jareau?” he lobs the question straight at the blonde woman. “What kind of family are you running here?”

“He’s not drunk, he was sleepwalking,” JJ says through gritted teeth as she helps Henry lift the teenager who was still a little dazed but was more aware now than he had been previously. “Hey, hey, Michael, can you hear me? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can hear you,” Michael says wincing slightly and grabs at his head. “Where am I? Why does my head hurt?”

JJ’s eyes pierce through the tall man across from her, her jaw set tight, her nostrils flaring and she is trying desperately to ease her temper. Because she knew if she didn’t, she would shoot Hastings for doing what he had just done to her son, no questions asked.

“You took a tumble, bud, but you’ll be alright,” Henry says as he wraps his brother’s arm around his neck for support. “We’re gonna get you back to the cabin.”

Henry watches the silent standoff that is happening between his mother and Hastings. He is slightly terrified that they are about to lunge for each other or maybe draw their weapons again but he sees his blonde mother relent. She looks over her teenaged son and runs a hand through his hair comfortingly.

“Let’s get you back to mom and check you out, alright?” JJ says as evenly as possible, nodding her head as she is trying desperately to focus on her son but she is entirely aware of Hastings suspended presence watching them with his cold dead eyes and serious stare.

“This is a warning, Jareau,” Hastings finally voices and JJ turns back to him, meeting those eyes in a challenging glare. “Keep your kids off my goddamn property or next time you’re gonna be dealing with my buddies down at the police station, you get me?”

“That won’t be a problem, Hastings,” JJ says with venom in her tone. She nearly adds her own threat but bites her tongue, thinking better of it. She knows that this didn’t need to escalate any further than it had already. They had had enough excitement and confrontation in the last year to last them a lifetime.

Henry starts to head off with Michael in the direction of the trail and JJ follows slower with her back turned towards the boys. She keeps an entirely protective stance facing Hastings as they finally make their way through the clearing and disappear out of the man’s line of sight. She’s not entirely sure how she had made it without letting her anger that she felt boiling inside of her get the best of her. But for now, her focus was simply and solely on the safety of her son.

Emily got the text from JJ that Michael was safe, injured but safe. She figures she’s somewhere close to six miles down the trail but there’s a fire in her bones now, fueled simply by her son’s well-being that sends her sprinting the other way. The brunette felt that time was irrelevant as she quickly makes her way through the beaten path. Her thoughts running rampant, she wonders how it had been so quiet up here prior to JJ and the boys’ arrival. Now everything just felt like the mess that she had left behind.

The older woman quickly makes her approach to the cabin, bounding up the stairs nearly out of breath and barges through the front door where she knew that the remainder of her family would be. JJ and Henry jump with the intrusion but the blonde woman sighs in relief as Emily finally entered the cabin.

“Jesus, Em,” JJ breathes through her anxiety. She was set in front of the couch where her injured son set and is inspecting Michael’s head wound which seems to be fairly superficial. She lined a warm rag along his bleeding forehead and he merely winces away and grabs the rag himself. Henry watched on from the chair off to the side, biting at his fingernails.

“Michael, oh my god,” Emily murmurs as she approaches the spot next to JJ and runs her fingers through the crown of his dirty blonde hair to inspect the wound herself. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” Michael says with a shrug and shake of his head. “I mean, one minute I’m reading files and starting to fall asleep then I wake up in the woods by the old tire swing and Hastings is slamming my head against it.”

“He did fucking what?” Emily exclaims as she starts to the pull out the pistol that she had holstered and checks the clip. JJ stands and places a gentle hand on the brunette’s that was starting to shake a little in anger and the blonde knew all too well that if she was to let her wife pay a visit to Hastings that the man would likely not survive the encounter.

“Em, don’t,” JJ says softly, an exhaustion seem to be play across her face. She sighs, feeling everything of the past year weighing heavy on her. “Look, I dealt with Hastings for tonight and we’re all exhausted, Michael is fine, I don’t think he even has a concussion so let’s just go to bed and we’ll deal with all of this tomorrow.”

Emily only relents when she looks at the deep set fatigue in her wife’s stance and the worrisome looks on her sons’ faces. She nods easily in response and puts the pistol back in its holster, “Henry, will you help Michael back to bed please?”

Henry merely nods as he stands and helps Michael to his feet and they walk towards the hallway again. Both JJ and Emily hear Michael utter, “Ugh, I need a shower.”

“I’ll help you, bud,” Henry’s word come before they are out of the room and the blonde and brunette are left reeling in the living area. Emily’s eyes never leave the direction that her sons went and JJ sighs again, her hands covering her face as she sets herself back in front of the couch. The blonde staring off into the distance at nothing, she’s not sure she can take much more of what was happening to her family.

The older woman finally takes the seat on the couch across from her wife. They sit in silence, spending the time thinking a little too much of what could’ve happened tonight but thankfully didn’t. JJ finally meets Emily’s brown eyes in a tired stare. She looks at her wife wearily. Her thoughts running back to what had happened the last time they tried to go to bed.

“Are we gonna talk about what happened earlier?” JJ asks quietly, having to look away from her wife out of nervous energy. “You know, before Michael, between me and you…”

“There’s nothing to talk about, JJ,” Emily says with a shrug, her own eyes bouncing around the little cabin in high hopes of avoiding this conversation. “Just go to bed.”

“You freaked out, Em, and I know that’s not for nothing,” JJ says seriously, her blue irises landing back on the deep depths of her wife’s.

“Maybe I freaked out because my estranged wife made a move on me when she hasn’t even so much as touched me in six months,” Emily bites back, a little irritated with JJ’s line of probing.

“That’s not it and you know it,” JJ replies calmly with a shake of her head. “So what really happened?”

“Our daughter happened, Jennifer,” Emily snaps coldly to the younger woman, finally meeting the blue eyes that are laced with hurt. She couldn’t care anymore though. She was done being interrogated. “Just go to bed, JJ, and leave it alone.”

JJ sighs and swipes her hand over her face again, she was irritated and emotional. She hates that the tears that line her eyes are standard now. She hates this divide between her and her wife who was only mere inches from her now but miles away from her mentally and emotionally. She had felt the connection so strongly earlier that she couldn’t deny it but now that connection was lost in the white noise of their lives again. It was all too normal now.

The blonde stands up, not knowing what else to say. Almost certain that there was nothing to say or do now. There never was anything that made this situation better for them. She’s about halfway to the bedroom when she realizes that Emily isn’t following her.

She turns around and notices the brunette hasn’t moved an inch, stock still on the couch and staring at the front door of the cabin, so she speaks up, “You not coming to bed?”

“No, not right now anyway,” is all Emily offers and JJ isn’t surprised so she rolls her eyes and lets the raven-haired woman be. She figures the older woman will drown in her darkness one of these days and JJ used to think she was the antidote to these emotions but nowadays, it felt more like a lost cause than not. She was no longer this woman's antithesis but instead maybe her equal in the darkness of this grief. So JJ turns back towards the bedroom and quietly closes the door.

She leaves Emily Prentiss to drown because she doesn’t know how to save her anymore. And right now, she doesn’t even know how to save herself as she was barely treading water on her own.

Because she knew that tomorrow, they would lay their daughter to rest for the final time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from "woods" by bon iver.


	5. i can feel my heartbeat taking me down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am soooooo incredibly sorry that it took nearly a month for me to get back into the swing of writing this. my work schedule has been hell (2ams yike) and having to go in when i'm not even scheduled (double yike). so i've been in a bit of a writing slump but i am back, or well, attempting to be.
> 
> once again, i am sorry for the delay. this update is like 6.3k words so hopefully it makes up for my absence.
> 
> enjoy!

Emily was awoken by the sounds of footsteps approaching the living area. She had fallen asleep on the couch some time after JJ had gone to bed. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence as she usually passed out only when and where her body allowed. It wasn’t often enough to be healthy she supposes but since losing Carrie nothing has been right.

She squints as the light of the summer sun is coming through the half closed shutters are blinding her. Emily notices Michael who sets himself down in the chair next to her head that was still laying on the arm of the couch. She quickly sits up a little, looking over her son and taking in his injury and she feels the anger rise in her stomach once again.

“Hey, how’s your head?” Emily inquires through the roughness of her voice from just waking up. She clears her throat a little but never takes her eyes off the teen who shrugs.

“It’s whatever, it doesn’t even hurt for real,” Michael offers and the older woman swears she sees a little of herself in the boy despite there being no blood relation between them. She sees in the boy’s defense mechanisms and the way he was never the kind to mention that he was sick or injured and he most certainly did not care for being the center of attention. He liked to handle things himself and often felt suffocated when someone was too overbearing. He was a little too much like her, Emily thinks.

“Well, that’s good at least, my boy is as tough as his parents, I see,” the brunette offers with a little smile although the matter was serious. She figured the boy needed something to lighten his mood right about now. “How’d you sleep after everything?”

“Well, you know, not that great honestly,” the teenager offers as he shifts awkwardly in his seat. He was squirming but Emily was patient because she knew how Michael was. He was like her and sometimes that meant staring the boy down until he finally opened up which is exactly what Emily does now. “I mean, I guess I was a little afraid I’d sleepwalk again but Henry stayed in my room the whole night so I got a little sleep.”

“Good, I’m glad he did that,” Emily says and she’s not really surprised, Henry had always been the protective big brother. When the eldest boy wasn’t able to protect his little sister, Henry’s defense of his little brother increased tenfold and he spent the majority of his time last summer not letting Michael out of his sight. “You’re lucky to have a big brother like him, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess, it’s just a bit much sometimes,” Michael relays with a shrug and Emily got that cause he enjoyed his independence. That’s when the two hear the wheels of a car pull up in the gravel and the dirty blonde teenager springs from the chair but the salt and peppered brunette is up just as fast. She holds her hand out against his chest keeping him in his spot as she goes to peek out the window. “It’s just dad, mom.”

And as Emily looks out the blinds, she sees her son is right and nods her head once, tossing her thumb over her shoulder and her hands go to her hips. She follows Michael at a slower pace as the boy practically leapt onto the porch. So she simply stands, holding the front door open and watches JJ’s ex step out of his mustang convertible. He looked a little different from the last time she had seen him but it had been several months since then and the man no longer donned the beard that once set upon his sunken cheeks and jawline. A lot had changed since then for the man or so she’d heard.

“How was the drive up from DC?” Emily asks as her arms fold over themselves across her chest. She didn’t really care but the struggle for much else in the way of a greeting escaped her. Their relationship wasn’t exactly on the best of terms anymore. At one point they had actually managed to be pretty good friends while raising the kids together, almost had to be. But since Caroline, things had quickly gone downhill between them, not that it was surprising to most anyone.

“Oh, you know, delightfully uneventful as always,” Will indulged her as he approached the porch and took in the sight of his teenaged son and his expression darkens into confusion as he makes his way up the steps. He manages to hold onto Michael by the back of the neck and inspects the fresh wound on his head. “What the hell happened to you, son? I let you come up to the cabin with Emily and you’re already getting yourself hurt?”

“I just, you know, had bit of an accident while I was walking in my sleep last night… no big deal,” Michael shrugs and plays it off but Will catches Emily’s eyes and the older woman just sighs, a weak shake of her head tells him to leave it alone for now. He reluctantly does. “Henry’s pretty pumped to see you since he didn’t have time to catch you yesterday.”

“Well, I’m excited to see the both of you,” Will says and walks into the house as Emily gestures towards the door, being the last one in before closing and locking it behind her.

“Dad! I thought I heard you,” Henry says as he makes his way from the kitchen, Pop-tart in hand and wraps his arms around his father in a tight hug.

“How are you, champ, huh?” Will asks with a wide smile on his face as he embraced his son. “You feel like a college grad yet?”

“Nah, not quite,” Henry said with a shake of his head and Will ruffled the eldest boy’s hair. Most of the time for Emily, JJ and Will, it was still hard to see the kid as a man but he had grown up all too much, was finishing the first part of his schooling and could even grow a bit of stubble if he so felt like it. This much they couldn’t deny but it never stopped astounding them every time they realized it.

JJ came out of the bathroom, her hair still damp from the shower and she took in the little reunion between her son and his father. She smiles at the idea but her face falls when she thinks about what brought them all back together again. The blonde makes her way over to them, saying, “Hey, Will.”

Will looks over at JJ and nods, opening his arms and extending a slightly awkward hug. Emily looks away because for some reason, as many times as she had seen the two exes embrace, it never got easier. Even despite knowing that there was nothing between the two, she can’t help but wonder if in her absence they had gotten closer. If the two of them, staying in DC and raising Michael as single parents again didn’t carry some weight between them. She wondered if the two ever found each other in the worst moments, moments that Emily wasn’t there for anymore, to comfort one another.

“So where’s Maddie?” Henry speaks up and asks. This draws Emily’s attention back to the scene tenfold as her eyebrow arches almost comically. She knew who ‘Maddie’ was from conversations with JJ recently. Hell, she had known of the girl prior from their daughter. Maddie had been one of Carrie's closest friends. So it had become quite the topic of conversation between the entire family at this point. “You didn’t bring her?”

“Uh, no, no, Madison couldn’t come, she had class,” Will says and then clears his throat. The air suddenly becoming thick in the room and JJ can’t quite help the slightly judgmental lift of her eyebrows and the roll of her eyes at the mention of the 19-year-old. “Besides this was more of a family affair anyways.”

“Well, I mean, I know Maddie, we went to school together,” Henry says and it’s almost unironic for a moment but Emily wants to scoff at the ridiculousness of this conversation. The idea of a son talking about his father’s girlfriend that he went to school with. “And she knew Carrie too, they were pretty close and they were in the same graduating class.”

“Yeah, well, we just thought it was best to keep it just us this time,” Will replies, he swallows a little heavy and as a woman who studied behavior for more than nearly thirty years, Emily sees how uncomfortable the man is with the conversation. She couldn’t really care though as he had brought it upon himself.

“Right,” Henry offers a little awkwardly, picking up the tension in the room that he seemed happy to ignore a moment ago. But the strain between his mothers was hazardous enough without throwing his father into the mix as well. “So you ready, Mikey?”

The eldest blonde boy walks over and pats his younger brother on the shoulder as he nods and they prepare to leave but Will seems a little off put by the move. His brow furrows in confusion, “Hey, where are you two running off to? I just got here.”

“Momma wants us to check out Carrie’s spot before we all head up there,” Michael says with a shrug.

“Alright, just be careful,” Will says with a nod and with little more than that, the boys are off and out the door. The three set of parental eyes watching after them as they go. And with the boys no longer present the awkward air returns tenfold and the silence a little too much for Emily at the moment.

“Well, I’m gonna hop in the shower,” she says, not looking at either of the other two in the room for a moment. Her eyes glance and meet JJ’s for only a second’s time before she nods her head. “I’m gonna go get ready.”

JJ shifts uneasily as Emily walks out of the room. Her and Will had been alone together more often recently with the brunette woman gone but it didn’t ease the tension or maybe the blame that rested there between them. There was so much more underlying than people knew, more than Emily or the boys even knew.

“Man, I sure do know how to clear a room, huh?” Will laughs humorlessly as he shifts his weight and follows JJ into the kitchen where she prepares herself a cup of coffee out of the Keurig that Emily had there. “Yeah, sure, I’d love a cup of coffee too.”

“You know how to make it,” JJ says with a shrug and walks away to lean against the opposite counter away from Will with her mug in hand. She wasn’t entirely sure why but most of the time these days she wanted as far away from her ex as possible.

“So when did Michael start sleepwalking again?” Will asks as he waits for the machine to brew the hot coffee. “And why didn’t you think to tell me?”

“It just happened again last night, Will,” JJ says with a shrug, not wanting to indulge him in the details. He wasn’t exactly much of a regular presence nowadays anyway. He had thrown himself into work since Caroline passed and into the arms of someone old enough to be his daughter. Hell, she was Carrie’s age… or what age Carrie would’ve been. “Besides if you weren’t so preoccupied getting busy with their high school friends then maybe you’d be aware of these things.”

“What does Madison have to do with this, Jennifer?” Will asks shortly and JJ rolls her eyes at the use of the young female’s full first name. She cringes a little in thought of the relationship between her ex and her daughter’s old friend.

“Since when is it Madison anyway?” JJ asks cuttingly.

“She wants to be taken a little more seriously now,” Will says with a shrug of his shoulders, dead serious and JJ almost laughs. A 19-year-old girl wanting to be taken more seriously was a laughable matter now but she remembers those days, she herself had gone through a whole period in college where she requested everyone call her ‘Jennifer’ but that was a long time ago now. “And this isn’t about me, I told you it was probably a bad idea for the boys to come up here and now Mike’s sleepwalking again.”

“And what good would that do, Will?” JJ asked vehemently, still a little perturbed by the idea that her ex had been telling her for the last week in an attempt to keep her away from here. “I’m just supposed to deny the boys from seeing their mother? We’re just supposed to completely shut Emily out?”

“Isn’t that what she did to all of you?” Will shoots back as he sips his black coffee and stares JJ dead in the eye, the insinuation stings a little more than it’s supposed to but JJ knew it was partly the truth. “Besides she’s not actually their mother anyway.”

JJ hadn’t felt the fire in her bones to protect and defend Emily in a while but it was there now as she takes the few steps towards Will and slaps him straight across the face. He stumbles a little back against the counter at the shock of the strike. JJ murmurs through gritted teeth, “Don’t talk about her like that.”

Will laughs while rubbing the side of his face where JJ’s hand had hit. His thick accent laces his next words, “Damn, you two must still be fucking each other, huh?”

JJ shoots him a strong stare and he raises his hands in surrender. The blonde woman sighs and runs her hands over her eyes, “Let’s just lay Carrie to rest and get through today civilly please, it’s already hard enough.”

Will simply nods his head in agreeance as JJ was right because it was already hard enough on all of them. He felt the itch and adrenaline of the hit though, he felt the longing in his soul to cast blame on anyone who wasn’t himself. Emily and JJ were ripe for the picking.

“Right,” he says with a nod of his head. His arms flail out with his coffee in his hand, gesturing towards his ex a little more purposefully this time, aimed to wound. “Besides it wasn’t Emily’s fault that you were the one to convince her to let Carrie come up here alone anyway, right?”

JJ’s hands shake at the words that left Will’s mouth, the coffee that still lined her cup splashing about inside of it. The anger she had kept reeled in since yesterday was building again and aimed entirely for the man in front of her. She tries to rein it in but the more she tries the harder it fights back as she tosses the mug in her hand at Will’s head, he ducks just in time for it to miss his head and crash and shatter against the cabinet behind him.

“What the hell, Jay?” Will asks as if he hadn’t just incited the incident that had occurred, as if he didn’t deserve what had just been chunked at him.

“Fuck you, Will,” and with those words JJ storms out of the cabin.

It was a few minutes later, Will was still standing in the kitchen. He had finished his coffee and took to cleaning up the mess that JJ had left behind. Emily exits the bathroom and notices the only sign of life coming from the kitchen so she pops her head in. She watches Will discarding the broken mug in confusion. She shakes her head at the man.

“Where’s JJ?” she asks with furrowed brows. She watches the man shrug and point towards the door. She simply sighs.

The blonde woman was trekking her way through the wooded area, she didn’t exactly know where she was going but she was just allowing her feet and anger to take her wherever they lead. She was too lost in her thoughts to realize she was following a similar path to the one she had the night prior, the same one that both she and Emily had traveled when they discovered their daughter’s dead body.

When she arrives at the plateau, more visible now in the light of day, she knows exactly where she is because there was still a string of police tape left behind remaining in a nearby bush. It had been a while since she felt the heaviness in her chest the way she did now. She had seen all the therapists the bureau had recommended her. She had taken all the medications and numbed herself to the point of not being able to feel the kind of panic that was sweeping over her now. But she had never found herself here, taking in the site of her daughter’s rape and murder again either.

She had never actually visited the site after seeing Caroline laying here dead. She had let the team and the officials handle the case. She hadn’t been able to face it herself. She hadn’t realized how the site overlooked the lake and mountains nearby. She hadn’t realized the serene quality this place could actually hold had it held any other kind of weight for her than what it was currently putting on her.

Will’s words and accusations still ringing in her head, it’s all she had been drowning out for the last year. She knew the circumstances surrounding Caroline’s disappearance all too well however, she knew the part she played in it. She knew what Will and Emily had over her when it came to the death of their daughter. JJ didn’t need it thrown in her face to see it, it haunted her every day as it is.

_“God, you all still treat me like a little girl!” Caroline yells at Emily more than JJ. The brunette was standing in the living room with her hands on her hips while JJ remained set calmly on the couch. Emily and Caroline were known for butting heads when it came to their daughter’s independence. The teenager storms off down the hallway of the house but not before letting out one last bellow of rebellion. “I’m not a kid anymore, I’m an adult now!”_

_“You sure have a funny way of showing it, missy!” Emily yells back down the hall as the door slams and she jumps a little at the sound. JJ had remained set silently as her daughter and wife had it out about Caroline’s graduation trip to the cabin, one that JJ had suggested in the first place. The brunette turns back to her wife. “Are you serious with this trip, JJ? She’s too young to be up there by herself.”_

_“She won’t be up there by herself,” JJ says evenly while shaking her head. She was trying her best to appeal to her wife’s more reasonable side but she knew that was a hard shell to crack when it came to their daughter. “She’ll be up there with friends and it’s just for a weekend, Caroline knows her way around up there almost better than anyone.”_

_“Okay, that doesn’t negate the fact that she’s too young to be going up there on her own without one of us there,” Emily shoots back at her wife who gave her a long look. JJ stands from her position on the couch and makes her way over to her wife. The blonde’s hands making their way to her wife’s arms as she looks at her seriously._

_“She’s right, Em,” JJ says looking her wife in the eye. “She’s not a kid anymore, she’s eighteen and we have to start letting her do things like this on her own, hell, she’ll be off to Yale in the fall and then what are you going to do?”_

_“I was actually already looking at properties around New Haven anyway,” Emily grumbles and JJ laughs a little, shaking her head._

_“I’m sure you are but we have to let her live her own life now, just like we did with Henry,” JJ says and Emily sighs, knowing JJ had a point. But JJ was also the more lax parent between the two of them. “We can’t chaperone her forever.”_

_“Henry went to school like an hour away and this is different, Jay,” Emily says somewhat sadly. JJ knew that the older woman was struggling with their little girl getting older and making her own decisions. It had been the same when Carrie had told Emily that she wanted to join the FBI, an idea that JJ had been all for from the beginning._

_“It’s not different, Em, cause she’s growing up and there’s nothing we can do about it,” JJ says with a shake of her head. “Besides she’s going to Yale, not some party school.”_

_“You’d be surprised just how many parties they throw at Yale,” Emily says cutting her eyes to her wife in a serious but still a light tone and JJ laughs again._

_“She’s going to Yale, she wants to join the bureau,” JJ says, listing off their daughter’s aspirations to her wife with a smile. “She basically wants to be just like you, Em, so I’d take that as a compliment.”_

_“Really? After everything I got myself into, you take that as a compliment?” Emily says seriously, thinking about all she had gotten into. Or rather how much trouble she had gotten herself into both before, during and after Yale, even while in the bureau._

_“I don’t know, I mean you turned out pretty good in my eyes,” JJ says with a flirtatious twinge to her tone. “Besides Henry will be at Jack’s celebrating the end of the semester, we already told Michael that it was okay if he spends the weekend playing video games with Hank at Morgan’s so I thought maybe we could take the weekend for ourselves away from the job, the kids, we’re overdue for date night anyway.”_

_“So a date weekend?” Emily says with a surprised and intrigued raise of her eyebrows at the thought. It had been a while since they had stepped back from the job, from running the kids to and from school or friends or after school activities, when they had just enjoyed each other and only each other. “Alright, fine, she can go but if anything happens, it’s on your head, Mrs. Prentiss.”_

_“Aye, aye, Captain,” JJ says with a salute. “Besides I bought this really nice set of baby blue lingerie a while ago that I’ve been waiting to try on, and for you to take off and I think it would look really nice on our bedroom floor.”_

_“You’re gonna kill me, woman,” Emily says with a slanted smile on her lips. JJ leans in and gives her wife a deep kiss. They’re vaguely aware of when their fourteen year old son enters the room in his hoodie. He rolls his eyes and then coughs conspicuously and they break apart. “Fine, go break the news to the hoodlum in there.”_

_“Carrieeeeeee,” JJ sing-songs on the way to her daughter’s bedroom, making sure to swing her hips just right to ensure that Emily wouldn’t suddenly change her mind and back out of the proposal. “I have some good news.”_

_JJ entered the room without much prompt, she found her daughter sulking on her bed and toying with her phone and she sighs, “Alright, you can stop blogging about just how unfair life is and how much you just hate your stupid lesbo mothers now.”_

_“I wasn’t doing that,” Carrie says a little too defensively. JJ just gives her daughter a look and the dirty blonde girl just shrugs her shoulders and rolls her eyes. “Fine, I might have been texting Maddie just how unfair my lesbo mothers were being and that we couldn’t go to the cabin this weekend.”_

_“Of course, you were,” JJ says with a smile as she walks over and sits on Carrie’s bed next to her. She starts messing with the blonde locks that so much resembled her own. Sometimes it leveled JJ with what a mix of herself and Emily the girl was. The attitude of a Prentiss but the beauty of the Jareau’s was one hell of a mix, she’d learned. “But you can text her back and let her know that your cool, blonde secret agent mom convinced super serious unit chief mom that it’s alright if you and the girls go up there this weekend by yourselves.”_

_“Are you serious?” Carrie questions with glee, her face lighting up in a smile that so resembled her own blonde mother so much that they could be considered twins. “Wait, how did you even- you know what, I don’t even want to know but thank you, thank you, thank you, momma.”_

_The teenager threw herself into her mother’s arm and JJ lived for these moments. The moments when her angsty daughter was absolutely alight with joy. The older woman just laughing at her daughter’s antics as she says, “Alright, just promise that you won’t get into any trouble or have too much fun.”_

_“Don’t worry, momma,” the blonde said with a conspiratorial smirk on her face. “We promise to have an absolutely dreadful time as possible.”_

JJ thinks that smile haunts her now. She would rather have her daughter gloomily stomping around the house, shooting glares her and Emily’s way and that she would rather face every single possible mood swing her daughter could throw at her to not be here right now. To be facing these truths. Becoming more aware of her surroundings, JJ realizes that she’s fallen to her knees now, the sobs overtaking almost more so than when they first discovered their little girl here in these woods.

That’s when she hears a twig snap behind her and her head snaps behind her as well. She sees the figure of a tall man making his way through the wooded area. JJ’s hand instinctively falls to her hip, she adorned the gun under her light jacket on the windy morning now after the night they had had. She realizes that they couldn’t be too careful or take anymore chances after everything that happened to them here in these god forsaken woods.

The former agent wipes her tears away from her cheeks and draws her gun on the man as he makes his way through a nearby clearing and the familiar face enrages JJ as he raises his hands in a mock sense and a smile graces his features. Hastings has a rifle slung over his shoulder and was sporting camo jacket with an orange outline upon it. He shakes his head and laughs at the predicament they now find themselves in, “You sure do love to pull your gun on me, huh, Jennifer?”

“What the hell are you doing out here, Hastings?” JJ says, her anger overwhelming her sense of sadness that she had just felt at the sight of the man who had hurt her son the night prior. She lowers her gun however, holstering it warily.

“Hunting, but I could ask the same of you there, Jareau,” the man says while looking around the area. He seems to realize what the semblance that this place held for the woman. “A little morbid of you to be out here right now, isn't it?”

“And I thought hunting season was over,” JJ spits towards the man in irritation.

“Not for turkeys,” he says with a smile. “Not that this place is crawling with them but you can’t blame a guy for trying to feast his eyes on one. I see you couldn’t help but bring yourself back here, hell, if I’m being honest it’s one of my favorite places out here too… with the view and all.”

“How dare you,” JJ says through gritted teeth, she pushes herself up from her kneeled position and approaches the man fast. “How dare you come here and talk to me like that after what you did to my son!”

“Take it easy there, Jennifer, don’t forget about what I said with my friends down at the station,” Hastings warns as her hand is raised ready to strike the man but he grabs ahold of it quickly. “You don’t want to do anything you’d regret while you’re still mourning your daughter, Caroline, was it?”

“Get your fucking hands off of me,” she exclaims, shoving the man away from her in her anger but not too far away with the size of the guy. “Don’t you dare even speak to me about my daughter when you didn’t even know her.”

Hastings lets out a hardy laugh at the woman’s state and just shakes his head, “I was just passing through anyway… I guess I’ll leave you to your drowning now, Jennifer.”

The tall man walks off back through the clearing from where he came and leaves JJ shaking with anger at the gall of the hunter. That he would even let her daughter’s name fall from his lips left JJ with an undeniable and unshakable unease. She realizes now that she was, in fact, shaking with her fist wound so tight that her knuckles wear white and the hot tears were making their way back down her face again.

Her shaking finds her knees giving out on her again. She feels weak letting herself fall back to the dirt so she takes her fist, her insides riddling with anger over everything. The guilt, what happened to Caroline, convincing Emily to let her come up here, now with Michael the night before. Nothing felt like enough, JJ was not the perfect PTA mom that she had once made herself out to be, no. She had failed and still continues to fail her children over and over again. So her fist falls hard over and over again to the ground with each passing thought of her failings.

Finally, something snaps in her and she stops herself short of another hit. Knowing that if she kept going like this her hand would be nothing less than a bloody stump but as she turns her right hand over, she sees the mess that her knuckles already were. She winces as she flexes the bloody knuckles lined with dirt and she relishes the pain there now. It’s all she had anymore.

She thinks about how her and Emily had spent that night… that stupid date night when Caroline was out here all alone, getting drunk, wandering into the woods… running straight into the hands of the unsub that would defile and deface her entire being and existence. JJ lands one more blow to the earth that had played its own complicit part in the loss of her daughter at the thought.

_It had only been a couple of hours that she had fallen asleep in Emily’s arms, both satiated from the heated session they had had earlier. It had been a wonderful night and one too long overdue. She loves these moments, when it was just her and her wife showing each other the kind of love that had always brought them together regardless of hardships or circumstances. And JJ was right, that lingerie did indeed look better on their floor and hanging from their bedpost._

_Something had woken her however, some feint nightmare that wasn’t anything new to either JJ or Emily. Night terrors were pretty standard fare for them in their line of work. They could both say however that recently had been better. Maybe it was the callousness of the job finally getting to them, but no case had haunted their dreams in a while._

_But this particular night, JJ woke in a warm, damp sweat and couldn’t just roll back over to sleep. She eases herself out of the bed and Emily stirs a little but JJ just hushes her back to sleep. She got up, dragging her phone with her as she went to grab a glass of water from the sink. She looks over the device, no case or call had come through. Nothing from her kids to say they were in trouble. No, all was seemingly well._

_She supposes if she was honest with herself, she was a little worried about Caroline at the cabin herself. JJ knew that her daughter had called when they got there and that everything was surely fine. But that didn’t stop her from dialing the number regardless. The dial tone trilling in a way that set JJ’s nerves on edge with the suspense of it._

_“Hey, you’ve reached Carrie Jareau-Prentiss, I can’t-“ and JJ hung up. She shook her head at how ridiculous she was being, it was 1am. The girls were probably asleep by now, tired after the long journey to the cabin. But JJ shook her head, her daughter was too much like Emily and herself and didn’t go to sleep at a decent time if she could help it. And that’s when JJ’s stomach first dropped._

JJ thinks of that moment and she wishes she had done anything in that moment. Hell, if she had driven out to the cabin that morning then who knows what could’ve happened. Could Carrie still be here? She knows the thought is ridiculous. She knows no matter what that she never could’ve made it to the cabin in time. Caroline’s throat was cut clean and she bled out in mere moments. She knows the ins and outs of crimes like these. And not just because her daughter was a victim of them.

She pulls out her iPhone, she knows the number she’s dialing cause she can’t even quantify the number of times that she had called it in the last year and not received a reply much like that night. But she calls it regardless because in some ways it gave her solace. It gave her comfort when all else failed. The dial tone carries on much like normal and JJ hardly even notices it anymore. What she notices, in her kneeled position, still set in the dirt, is the tear making its way down over the top of her nose to the tip of it where it drips with the drowning that she deserved. Yes, Jennifer Jareau deserves this hell.

“Hey, you’ve reached Carrie Jareau-Prentiss, I can’t come to the phone right now cause God knows what I’m getting up to,” she hears her teen daughter’s cheery voice on the other end of the voicemail and the dam breaks. JJ sobs at the sound of her little girl’s voice that is gone, taken away from her entirely. “Leave your name and number and maybe I’ll get back to you… maybe.”

The girl’s laugh is cut off by the tone of the beep and JJ hangs up. She knew that it was slightly sadistic that she kept paying for Carrie’s phone long after the girl’s death. She knows it’s incredibly selfish that she kept the device plugged into the girl’s wall in her room at home. But JJ had to hold onto something, there were plenty of photos and videos but for some reason hearing her daughter’s voice on the other end of the phone was what she chose to hang onto.

Outside the cabin at the edge of the woods, Emily Prentiss was pacing nervously, biting at the nail of her thumb and dialing a number on her own phone. She brings the device to her ear for the fifth time, hoping this would be the time that JJ finally picked up. It had been nearly an hour since JJ had stormed off but the SUV was still present and no one had known which direction she had gone.

It’s then that Emily faintly hears the buzzing of another cellphone behind her and she sees JJ coming out of the woods. The blonde looking worse for wear, her eyes bloodshot red, her jeans covered in dirt and her hand as bloody as the brunette had ever witnessed it. She looks in concern towards the other woman, her wife.

“JJ, what the hell happened? We’ve all been calling you,” she faintly recognizes JJ’s head nodding but it isn’t much of a response. “Are you okay? What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing happened,” JJ says through a sniffle as she finally steps close to her wife. “Are the boys ready? Did they find Carrie’s spot?”

“Yeah, they’ve been back for a while, we’ve just been waiting on you,” Emily says and she can’t hide the concern that laces her voice. “What the hell happened, Jay?”

“Nothing, just leave it alone,” JJ offers weakly with a shake of her head. “Just let me change and we can do this, alright?”

Emily sees the tears and hears the slight sob in JJ’s voice before she swallows it. She’s not at all ignorant to the pain lacing her wife’s entire being but the older woman just lets it lie. That’s what they were best at doing these days, ignoring the other’s grief in turn for their own. It was nothing if not a broken system in an all but broken marriage. The former unit chief just wanted to lay her daughter to rest and she knew her wife needed the same thing, as hard as it was.

So as JJ walks past her, Emily does nothing but let her go. She knows more than likely where JJ had been and what she had been doing. It was something Emily had done a multitude of times since she’s been at the cabin, usually she was drunk when she did so but she understood. She just had to let her wife have her moment to say goodbye to their daughter where she took her last breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from the song "i can feel a hot one" by manchester orchestra.


	6. as second sun came past the glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another month, another chapter. but life, you know? i really am gonna strive to work and finish this fic soon. i promise.
> 
> this is a rough one towards the end and went in a very different direction from how i outlined it but i go where the story takes me, folks. so due to some recent ideas and inspiration, i have decided to extend this story from the original eight chapters to ten so i am able to build a more complete backstory. i hope that's alright with y'all, as regrettable it is to make you suffer all the more but bear with me and enjoy!

The remaining family of five is walking back from Carrie’s spot. The moment had been lowkey, nice and quiet. They had all said a few words and Henry played one of her favorite songs, ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ by The Darkness on his phone. A laugh was shared due to the fact that they all had suffered through a jam session or two with the teen and the song at some point.

Then they had all taken to spreading a little bit of her ashes at a time in their own unique manner. None of them had gotten through the experience unscathed by emotion. The boys and Emily had managed through the memorial the previous year without much of a tear shed but here, in the collection and confines of their small family, they were free to let the worn emotions of the last year show.

The blonde woman however was a little bothered by something Michael had said. He had sworn that one way or another they were gonna find the guy that did this, Emily had supported him as he said this by nodding her head and giving the boy a hug. JJ knew the odds however as she wasn’t so hell-bent on justice anymore. She knew the likelihood of ever figuring out who did this to her little girl were slim-to-none at this point. Unless this guy showed up elsewhere with the same MO then it wasn’t likely to happen and she refused herself that glimmer of hope anymore.

“I’m gonna head out but this was nice,” Will finally breaks the silence that had fallen over the group as he arrives at his car outside the cabin. “I think wherever Carrie is she’s up there smiling and laughing, probably singing ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ into her hairbrush and that’s a nice thought to leave with so thanks for having me.”

“Of course, Will,” JJ placates with a strained smile. He just nods his head as the boys offer their dad one last hug and he gets into the showy vehicle, swiftly driving off on his way. They knew there was little else to say in the way of farewells after something like this. JJ herself was itching herself to get away from the cabin. She knew now that she wasn’t wrong when she thought that this place was merely a ghost that haunted her now. “Why don’t you boys go get your stuff together, I think I want to head out for DC a little early.”

“But we practically just got here and we’ve barely even seen mom,” Henry starts to protest in an almost childlike tone but JJ just lifts her hand. He can read the exasperated expression written on her face that meant there was little leeway for argument so he relents.

“You have to be back at Georgetown for graduation rehearsals soon so don’t even start with me,” JJ says, slightly irritated. “You will see her at graduation next week.”

“Come on, Jay, just come inside for a little while,” Emily says and nods her head towards the cabin. “I can whip up a pizza and we’ll catch up and just talk.”

“Look, Em, I really appreciate it but I’m tired and I’d just rather get home,” JJ offers as her hand goes over her eyebrows. Emily sees the exhaustion written on the younger woman’s face and her eyes key in on the wounds lacing her wife’s right hand from the mysterious earlier incident. “Sooner rather than later.”

“God, this is so typical,” Michael suddenly voices with a roll of his eyes. The surprise he finds in the members of his family doesn’t elude him so he fires another round. “What? You come down here to cry about Carrie, fuck mom and then leave?”

“Hey!” is all JJ can offer in defense, the shock setting in as she had never heard her son talk quite like this, let alone to her. Not entirely sure where it was coming from either. He had moments, his outbursts of grief in anger before but he had never quite been so disrespectful.

“I thought you said you didn’t remember anything from last night?” Emily inquires objectively, and it’s relatively calm for how she feels hearing Michael talk to JJ like this but she wants to get down to the root of the matter and not just the surface of the subject.

“Well, it was hard to miss that before I fell asleep,” Michael groans and rolls his eyes again. “I was reading one of the files then I heard you two going at it, I mean the walls are pretty thin around here and they might as well have been shaking.”

“In his defense, you two have never been subtle when it comes to having sex,” Henry deadpans with skepticism, a little afraid of what his mothers’ reactions would be so he shrugs innocently enough and clears his throat. “We both heard you.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” JJ cuts in, fed up with the conversation centering on the estranged couple’s sex life. “Go get your stuff together because we are leaving, now.”

“This is so not fair,” Michael vehemently protests at his mother. “I haven’t even been able to get through all the files that mom has on Carrie’s case, I wanted to finish them before we left.”

“Okay, this has gone far enough, Michael,” JJ snaps at the fifteen year old. “You are a teenager, I’m sorry but you are not going to be able to find Carrie’s killer when your mom and the entire team have combed through every single one of those files for months, hell, the entire year and haven’t been able to come up with anything. There’s absolutely no way.”

“Hey, hey, ease up, Jay,” Emily says quietly, taking JJ by the arm and trying to calm her down but she knows she fails when the younger woman turns on her. The blonde woman’s index finger shoved into her face and her lips with venomous words spouting off at her.

“And don’t even get me started with you,” JJ warns haphazardly. “How are you going to let our fifteen year old son read files of his sister’s rape and murder then condone him trying to find this unsub when he couldn’t possibly grasp what happened?”

“I understand it, I’m not stupid,” Michael protests and this seems to be the final straw. In a blink of an eye, JJ and Michael are in each other’s faces. Emily and Henry stare wide-eyed, frozen watching the scene unfold between mother and son, feeling all but helpless to stop it from happening. Emily sees her wife starting to go off the deep end, something she’d rarely seen herself, a terrifying version of the woman as she screams into the face of her son. Then the words escape Michael’s mouth, “Oh my god, I hate you, it’s almost like you don’t even want to find who killed Carrie.”

“Alright, that is enough!” Emily finally exclaims and the moment of silence following is excruciating. JJ’s icy blue eyes blown nearly grey with shock now; breathing heavy and anger boiling low in her, that much everyone knew. Michael nearly the same, his lips taut against each other, nostrils flaring and the scene is a little too tense for anyone’s liking. It seems that the family had finally reached its tipping point. “Henry, Michael, go inside and get your stuff right now, you’re going home with your mom!”

“No, I’m not going home with that bitch,” Michael says low and calm, everyone’s head whipping around in shock at the use of language in reference to his mother. “I want to stay with you this summer, I can’t stand another second of her poor, poor pitiful me shtick, I want to be here and actually help figure this out and not just wallow in it anymore like her.”

“Michael, you look at me and listen closely,” Emily says seriously, taking her son by the jaw and forcing him to look her in the eye. “Do not ever talk about your mother like that ever again, do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Michael takes in the scolding with a nod of his head. He respects his brunette mother too much to ever deny her the courtesy but he was still steaming as he glanced at his other mother. “I still can’t go back there, not when I could be here helping.”

“Michael, you are not staying,” JJ says seriously, she has stepped back and calmed herself a bit, reevaluating. She knows she had gotten a little too heated to be rational but she levels herself out now, happy to let Emily handle Michael’s attitude. She was silently thankful that some part of their partnership still managed to function steadily. “There is nothing you can do here.”

“Look, I would love to have you here, I really would but I just don’t think it’s the right time,” Emily says with gravity, her wide brown eyes adhering and hoping that the boy was genuinely listening to what she had to say. “I’m not in any kind of position to take you in right now, bud.”

“Just say you don’t want me here,” Michael lowers his head and mumbles with a shrug. “It’d go down easier than just some bullshit excuse because it looks like you’re doing fine here, mom.”

“It’s not an excuse, I promise you,” Emily says genuinely and it kills her to see the pained look on her youngest son’s face, almost like he was feeling unwanted, maybe abandoned by anyone. She sighs and meets JJ’s eyes for a moment, the understanding there with no words. JJ tilts her head and shakes it regardless. “Look if your mom agrees then you can stay here with me through next week when Henry graduates, alright?”

Michael realizes he’s not exactly in the position to ask, not after all had been said. He lets his blue eyes, the slightest hint of hazel to them that remind JJ so much of her daughter and her wife, earnestly requests. The begging look was breaking her, taking her back to times when she had relented, been too lenient with Carrie, and every voice in her head is telling her that this wasn’t a good idea, that this place held some sort of curse for her children. The bated breath of the three people she loves most causes her to cave more than she is proud to admit.

“Fine but if I hear so much as you stubbed your toe then I’m coming back here to get you, no questions asked, do you understand?” JJ lays with a deathly serious and threatening raise of her eyebrow towards the boy. The worry was evident on her face and intently weighed in her tone.

“I understand,” he says through the smallest of smiles as he nods. He was momentarily pleased with the outcome. It wasn’t exactly what he had wanted but he could work with this arrangement at least. This bought him time and that he was okay with.

“Alright, you only brought a few pairs of clothes so you need to make sure they’re washed every few days,” JJ says as she softens, approaching her son and gives him a kiss on the forehead.

“I know how to do laundry, Jay,” Emily says with a humorous tone before JJ cuts her eyes at the older woman, rolling them slightly.

“Twenty years of marriage and you could’ve fooled me,” JJ quips finding the lightness in her tone now. She hoped that this time away from Michael would benefit their relationship and not harm it any further. She thinks that maybe the space will do both of them good. The boy was too damned much like Emily Prentiss for his own wellbeing. “Go grab your stuff, Henry, we should head back.”

“I was thinking, uh, you know,” Henry starts to say awkwardly, bouncing on his heels nervously. “You know, it’s nothing against you, it’s just I haven’t really spent a lot of time with mom and I’d like to see more of her so maybe I could stay here, just through tomorrow night, you know?”

JJ sighs at the thought, maybe an empty house was what she needed for once but why did it feel more like a burden? Both of her sons not wanting to be home with her hurt a little but she was trying to not take it personal like Henry had said. “Fine, I’ll be back tomorrow night to pick you up?”

“Yeah, that sounds like a plan,” Henry nods and shrugs, at ease with the reconciliation of the moment.

“I’m sorry, momma,” Michael cuts in quietly as everyone turns their attention back to the youngest boy again, his head downcast and face clearly ashamed at his earlier outburst. “I really didn’t mean what I said, I was just upset. I’m sorry I called you a ‘bitch.’”

“It’s okay, son,” JJ says as she approaches the boy and takes him into her arms for a hug. “I know you didn’t really mean it, this weekend has just gotten to all of us a little.”

“Why don’t you boys say goodbye, go inside and make yourself comfortable,” Emily says, looking away and giving the boys and their mother some privacy. “I need to talk to your mom for a minute.”

They all exchange a round of too long hugs and drawn out ‘I love you’s before the boys make their way back inside slowly and JJ watches them go. She sighs a little, having a hard time parting ways with them. This felt harder than watching Henry go off to college, much harder than unknowingly watching Carrie walk out the door for the last time to her first and last adventure on her own.

“Look, if you’re not okay with this,” Emily says, reading the longing in the blonde woman’s expression. “I can level with them, tell them that they need to go back home with you, they may not like it but I think they’d understand.”

“I mean, god, Em, I just haven’t had an empty house in twenty-two years but I’m sure I’ll manage,” JJ says with a sad tone, shrugging her shoulders. “Besides I think the boys need you a lot more than they need me right now, clearly.”

“That’s not true, Jay, but,” Emily starts to say before thinking a moment and continuing. “I mean you could stay too, if you wanted, I’m not opposed to the idea or anything, I mean…”

“No, Emily, after last night and today, I just think it’s best that we all have some distance right now,” the younger woman laments with a nod of her head and Emily watches her closely. “Besides I’m sort of missing the house and you know, my own space.” 

“You mean Carrie’s bedroom?” Emily insinuates more than asks but poses it as a question more for her wife’s sake. “That sanctuary of her life you keep in there, it’s not very healthy, you know?”

“Just like the sanctuary of her death that you keep in your dining room isn’t healthy either but we all have our shit from this, we just deal with it in our own ways,” JJ easily surmises with another shrug and Emily nods in understanding. “Just do me a favor and take it easy on the drinking while Henry and Michael are here.”

“JJ, look…” Emily starts to explain, maybe a little defensive, maybe with a need to justify it away but JJ didn’t need the excuses or the words. The palm of her hand clears her stance; she didn’t want to hear it.

“I get it, Em,” JJ says, cutting her wife off before she could really even begin. “Like I said, we all have our shit and ways of dealing with things but right now, I’m asking you for their sake.”

“I get that and I will but...” Emily starts, hesitating in her words. JJ thinks to interrupt her again but knows there’s something her wife needs to say, the way she fidgets nervously and the way her tongue starts to round its way over red lips. “I really am sorry, for the drinking, how bad it got... and I’m… just… sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” JJ nods solemnly but she knows there’s no going back. Sure there’s no repairing the damage that had been done, the changes in their souls and the scars that were left behind. “Look just take care of them and I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“Right, of course,” Emily simply nods, not quite having received the response she was hoping for. But what could be done honestly? She feels the dryness of her tongue, the empty heaviness of her mouth not allowing anymore to be revealed.

“I really am sorry too, Em,” JJ offers sincerely, the thought crosses her mind of when they became a regret and when they fell apart to the point that such a separation be necessary despite a swollen sense in longing of secession to stay now. This fighting feeling collapsing under the contrast of inferable immobility of their circumstance. “And I miss you so much sometimes… all the goddamn time... but nothing’s changed.”

“I know that,” Emily nods again, resigning once again to fate’s cruelty felt cast-iron in her destiny. More perhaps the decades engrained to repress the water at the gates, the inability to accept the devastating appealed more to the raven-haired woman’s need for emotional ineptitude. She was a master of feeling nothing in turn for the fear of feeling too much of everything.

“And I don’t know what really happened last night between us but I’m sorry if it was too far,” JJ lets herself venture. She sees the glaze in the brown eyes gloss as shiny as she ever had seen, protected farther now than she could imagine. “I don’t regret it though, I- I rather enjoyed it actually.”

“Uh, yeah, well, I’m glad,” Emily says awkwardly, uneasy in her stance. For all her guarded emotions, indifferent or in the middle were realms familiar as was shutting down. “You should get going.”

“Yeah, yeah,” JJ nods and the tension in the air coalesces as they reach for each other in their departing touch. JJ goes in for a hug and instead finds Emily’s hand landing at her cheeks with her lips falling on either side of her face. The gesture lingering in an intimacy long foreign and the blonde has to detach to ground the sensitivity in her skin telling her to stay. So she is quick in departure. “Bye, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Emily steps back, her head lowered in quiet concession as her wife hops quickly into the SUV, her eyes just as quickly masked by the aviators she purposefully places. She finds the steering wheel readily, avoiding the piercing look from the older woman sending impossible glares through the windows. JJ reverses with ease and peels off in the dirt. She can only breathe once she reaches the end of the gravel road leading away from the cabin. Lightweight tears gloss her eyes but memories colliding in her mind into the recollection of their ruination, weighing the gloss down in her eyelids to heavy pools that pain her irises in remembrance.

_The team was returning from another case, it was the disappearance of a college girl and they had spent two weeks combing through every lead and they hadn’t found a single trace of where the girl had gone. It had only nearly been three months since the disappearance and death of Emily and JJ’s daughter and the entire team felt the heaviness for which the couple carried with them through the case. They had all come to the conclusion that the girl had probably been taken and sold into a sex ring but had no proof._

_Alvez, Simmons, Lewis and Reid all file in behind Emily and JJ in the BAU office, none missing the tension between the two. JJ seemed to be simmering quietly in a misery she rarely let show through at work but it had gotten worse, especially when JJ and Emily had damn near gone in for each other at the local police department. Their unit chief had managed to stay as objective as possible throughout the case but JJ was bursting at the seams with anxiety, grief and anger._

_So the four sets of eyes watch as JJ follows Emily into her office. They watched on with bated breath to where this would lead. The team knew that the working relationship between the usually subtle couple was breaking at the bend. So they wait with intensely invested interest to see how it would unfold._

_“I can’t do this anymore, Em,” JJ says exasperated as she closes the door to her wife’s office. She watches the brunette round the desk setting her go-bag and briefcase beside it. Before the woman leans against the desk and stares hard into her wife’s blue eyes._

_“Good because I don’t think you can either,” Emily says seriously with a shake of her head. “You’ve lost your ability to be objective in the field almost entirely so I think it’s best if you step away indefinitely.”_

_As much as JJ knew this to be true, it was hard to face. She knew that she couldn’t handle the job, not when it impeded her entire life and had taken every ounce she had left but she also was skeptical at Emily’s resolve, “And I agree but what about you?”_

_“What about me?” Emily asked with confusion at her wife’s inference. “I am still able to do my job effectively but I thought when I told you that Cruz was pulling us off the case that you were physically going to fight me on it in the middle of the station.”_

_JJ sighs remembering the incident but shakes her head and flips it around, “Emily, you left the hotel in the middle of the night and no one knew where you went, you nearly gave Reid a damn heart attack!”_

_“And I showed up on time at the station that next morning,” the dark-haired unit chief confirms._

_“Yeah, barely sober, hungover and not having slept,” JJ says with her voice rising. “We could’ve been called in at any time if they had found that girl and you were off getting drunk!”_

_“But we weren’t called in and I had reason to believe that we were never going to be,” Emily says coldly, calm and almost in finality to the discussion. “So I think you should tender your resignation to the director, effective immediately, pack your things up and I’ll be home later.”_

_“You can honestly look me in the face and tell me that you were objective the entire two weeks on this case?” JJ asks with an absurd tone laced in her voice, disbelieving. “You can’t possibly tell me that you didn’t see our daughter in the face of that missing girl?”_

_“I saw a missing girl that we needed to find,” Emily says stiffly, meeting her wife’s piercing stare. “Sadly we were not able to do that and complete the job and that’s regrettable. But we have other cases we need to focus on now.”_

_“Do you even hear yourself right now?” JJ asks seriously, a concern now setting in her bones and expression yet getting more upset looking into the eyes of this woman she felt like she was losing. “Have you even let yourself feel a goddamn thing since Carrie died?”_

_“That’s enough, Agent Jareau!” Emily says standing straight up and practically breathing fire. She grits her teeth with her next statement. “Take care of what we talked about and go home.”_

_Though it was late, the entire team remained set at their desks, trying inconspicuously to watch as JJ stormed out of the office, took a seat at her desk, typed something on her computer and printed it out. They witnessed JJ leave for a bit and then come back with only a box to fill with the photos and small personal items she kept at her desk, including one of the last pictures that the blonde agent and their unit chief had taken with their daughter at her high school graduation. And without a word, Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Jareau walked out of the office for the last time and simply became JJ Prentiss, a grieving wife and mother who had lost her daughter and now her job._

JJ now driving away thinks of the moment in terrifying semblance of her life in retrospect. That was the moment that the woman had started allowing the world that she had built for decades to collapse. The moment when the walls she had built to protect herself started caving in on own her entire being.

Emily, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to move nor peel her eyes away from the road that JJ had driven down. She couldn’t bring herself to go inside just yet and face the two young men there. She could hardly admit to herself that the thought of being alone with her sons scared her a little. She hadn’t spent time alone with them both since before she left, before everything had completely fallen apart.

The conversation with JJ left her once more reeling back to final moments. There seemed to be so many final moments. The apology she had meant but her wife was right cause nothing had changed. Emily was still lost in the denial of it all, she wasn’t facing facts and she’d be damned if she wanted to. She couldn’t deal with it like JJ had, she couldn’t wallow in it. She had to figure this out; she had to find justice for her daughter one way or another. That had been what led her to leaving her family in the first place after all. Well, part of it anyway.

_Emily Prentiss for all her anger had sauntered through the house quietly, almost ghost-like in non-existence. She faintly heard the sound of some romantic comedy loudly playing from the family room. She knew it was JJ and Garcia’s girl’s day together and Michael would be out of the house as usual. They were weekly now as Penelope was desperately trying to ease the blonde’s heartache, she had tried to hammer through Emily’s own walls for a while but she was an unmovable mountain and Garcia eventually caved in trying to break the stone barriers along with everyone else._

_So the unit chief just quietly makes her way into her office in the home. She pours one heavy glass of bourbon after another and reads through Carrie’s files again and again, even after six months had past and she could recite the details by heart. This would be a maddening process for most any other mother who had lost their daughter but most mothers weren’t an SSA and the BAU Unit Chief either. Well, technically she wasn’t either now. She feels the anger start to stew inside her again. Usually she found solace in going through the details and combing the case, at least she was doing_ something _. But tonight was not one of those nights. No, tonight she was quickly verging on drunk and boiling beneath the surface._

_It was sometime later before Emily heard the movie shut off, heard the distinct murmurings of the two blondes saying their farewells in the foyer down the hall. She found herself staring at the wall off to the side of her desk instead of the files and sipping her bourbon. The dark-haired woman realized she didn’t exactly need any more to drink but she kept filling the glass to keep from feeling empty herself._

_She’s not even aware of the movement when the blonde hair of her wife shoots past the room before backtracking and looking confused, almost shocked at seeing her wife seated at the desk. JJ leans against the door way, arms crossed and wears a scowl, “Hey, when the hell did you get home?”_

_“A while ago,” Emily deadpans shortly, if she attempted to say more it would certainly sound a slur._

_“Well, why didn’t you come and watch the movie with me and Pen?” JJ asks, slightly offended honestly. “You’ve been on a case for two days and I haven’t even seen you.”_

_“Not in the mood,” the older woman quips shortly. Finally snapping her head to look at her wife._

_“Garcia told me about the case,” JJ reveals with a sigh. She hopes Emily will just finally open up to her. The walls were impenetrable and they had been for as long as their daughter had been gone. “She told me it was a pretty rough one.”_

_“Aren’t they all?” Emily offers rhetorically._

_“Right,” JJ says a little irritated at the shortness she was getting from her wife but she should be used to it by now. She wasn’t. “Well, did you catch the guy?”_

_“Yeah, I killed him,” the brunette says with ease like it was the most normal thing in the world._

_JJ’s eyes go wide and she stands up straight in her shock at the revelation. Garcia had not informed her of this information. “Oh my god, Em… What happened? Did he threaten you?”_

_“No, I just saw an opportunity and I took it,” Emily says with a shrug before finishing off her glass of bourbon. “And I rid the world of a man who rapes and kills twelve year old girls so not exactly a loss.”_

_The younger woman is stock still as she watches on in slight fear at the absolute remorselessness that her wife held revealing this, the complete nonchalance at taking another human’s life, no matter what they did. She can only manage, “Em…”_

_“So when we flew home this morning, I wrote up the report, saved Cruz the political headache and tendered my resignation,” the older woman reveals. “Not that I necessarily wanted to work for an agency that would so readily give up my daughter’s rape and murder case for someone else’s.”_

_“So you just quit?” JJ asks skeptically, she couldn’t believe she was hearing this from her wife. The woman that had fought so hard to stay with the bureau, the woman who had always called the BAU home and who had fallen headfirst into her work as an escape from the reality of the situation._

_“Yes, I just quit, kinda like you,” Emily shoots at her wife and JJ is a little taken aback by this. “Is that a problem? This way there will actually be someone working Carrie’s case instead of just goddamn ignoring it like nothing ever fucking happened.”_

_“The case is still technically open,” JJ replies, hoping this will ease her wife’s rising temper that she can see growing hotter by the moment. “But it’s been six months, Em, do you really think we are gonna find anything more than what we already have? The case has gone cold.”_

_“What would you fucking know about it?” Emily spits bitterly, her words slurring slightly as they make their exit. “You haven’t so much as looked at the goddamn file since we turned the case over to the locals.”_

_JJ takes a deep breath and enters the room a little more, she realizes how drunk Emily is but this was a constant now it seemed, just another addition in their warped new reality. “Listen, Em, we really need to talk about this cause you are acting like this is any other case but this- Carrie was our daughter and you are not dealing with that.”_

_Emily’s eyes shoot up sharply at her wife’s face, anger clear and present now. “At least I’m fucking doing something about it instead of wandering around this house like it was a goddamn tomb for our daughter.”_

_“That’s not fucking fair,” JJ exclaims, feeling the heat rise within herself. “I am trying to deal with this; at least I accept the fact that our daughter is dead and is never coming back.”_

_“You don’t think I fucking know that, JJ?” Emily stands in her anger, rising with her voice to near shouting levels. “I know my daughter is dead, thanks and I am trying to at least find the motherfucker that did this to her so she can actually rest in peace.”_

_“You act as if solving this case will just make it all go away and you won’t actually have to deal with this,” JJ says, her hands flailing about in anger. This was the most rise she had gotten out of her wife on the subject since she could remember. “Caroline is fucking dead, Emily.”_

_“Don’t say it like that,” Emily warns with a shake of her head. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”_

_“She is fucking dead and she is never coming back,” JJ repeats. “And finding the guy that did this will only make things worse cause we’ll have to relive over and over how she died like we don’t already do that enough. At least I can face the truth of the fucking matter unlike you who stews in the details without batting a goddamn eye like she was nothing.”_

_“You better get out of my fucking face,” Emily rounds the desk in her anger and shoves JJ towards the door. “How dare you talk to me like that, you heartless bitch.”_

_As she says this, Emily shoves JJ one last time towards the door. Harder, faster with more fury than she’s ever felt in her life and the blonde stumbles backwards, catching herself just barely but not before her forehead meet the doorway. A small cut lines the edge of her eyebrow and starts to bleed crimson. JJ recovers to stare wide-eyed in fear and ferocity._

_“Who in the hell are you?” JJ asks incredulously and infuriated. “I have no idea who this woman standing in front me is and I want you gone, I will not have you acting this way, drunk all the fucking time around our son, you know the one who you barely even talk to anymore.”_

_Emily’s eyes avoid the younger woman’s now. She was still angry, still seething and she couldn’t hear what JJ was saying, not really, “Don’t worry, I’m already gone cause I can’t deal with your bullshit anymore either.”_

_“Then leave, now,” JJ says with finality. No argument to be made in redemption. It was over, this the final straw, the inevitable concluding explosion of the ticking time bomb. “Get out!”_

And Emily did, barely even grabbing anything on the way out. The brunette leaves her wife and her son, her family in anger, in bitterness and she had willfully chosen to do so in the blur of denial, grief and drunkenness. The brunette pulled the last thread holding her life together. Emily Prentiss abandons the family that she had built to last, the one she swore she would never let fall apart like her own had as a child. She detaches the only anchor she had in her life. She doesn’t come to regret the decision until much later. Like now watching the dust of the gravel settle as her wife leaves her once again. Yet she turns away again, back to the cabin with a heart only further hardened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bon Iver's "715 - CR∑∑KS" heavily inspired this chapter and is the song from which the title stems.
> 
> i’m sorry if the ending is a little rough but the idea of Emily leaving JJ and the kids is based on a friend of mine’s experience with her dad after her mom died. it doesn’t play out the same way exactly except in the spirit of abandonment.
> 
> i promise the next chapter will have some lighthearted moments with Emily, Henry and Michael and won't be all doom and gloom, dark and heavy. just mostly.


	7. demons hammer down with every footstep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll keep this brief as this chapter is 6k+ words. but we're getting there, folks. i wish this chapter was better as it is one of the apex moments of the entire story but it is what it is. enjoy!
> 
> warning: this chapter gets quite violent towards the end.

The dark-haired woman is surprised as she enters the cabin to find the mood lightened. The boys seem relaxed. Henry prodding at Michael set in the chair in the main room reading yet another file to play a game of cards with the deck the elder boy held in his hands. The older boy hears his mother chuckle from the entrance at the door and he smiles, turning, lifting the deck and a mischievous eyebrow in the spirit of competitiveness.

“Game of war?” he challenges his mother.

“Oh, you are so on, kid,” Emily smiles and saunters in with confidence.

It was mid-afternoon, the summer sun still high and bright in the sky but none of the three feeling the need to bask in it. Their time outside remembering Carrie seemed to have drained their energy for the outdoors. So Henry and Emily play their game while Michael studies the case with the intensity of a student preparing his thesis and they leave him be. The mother and son were going hard at their game, slapping the cards and the other’s hands with intensity as well. But their laughter eases the competitive air.

Henry grows frustrated when the older woman slaps down and wins another round of cards, “Gah, this was practically a school sponsored sport in high school so why do I suck so bad?”

“Not all of us can have the reflexes of an FBI field agent, now can we?” Emily jokes. “I remember you and Carrie used to play this all the time back then.”

“Yeah, well, when you’re sent to a private school that doesn’t allow phones,” Henry quips, seeming a little bitter but not truly. “What else are you supposed to do between periods?”

“And if I recall correctly that private school got you into Georgetown,” Emily says playfully as she slaps down on another pile of cards.

“Like the Prentiss name didn't help,” Henry rolls his eyes. “Not to mention that momma’s an alumni too.”

“Whatever,” the former unit chief shrugs and the game continues in high spirits.

Michael still set quietly ruminating in the details of the file in front of him. He was now reading the two separate profiles that his mothers’ team had come to conclusion on; Carrie was either killed by a local who is more than likely anti-social and reclusive or a man passing through town who happened to run into and zone in on Carrie as a victim.

“Damn it,” Henry exclaims in defeat as he had run out of cards and his mother had just slapped down on the last of them. “How did you get so good at this game, mom?”

“Who else?” Emily shrugs in nonchalance. “I learned from the master.”

“She did inherit more of the FBI genes than I did,” Henry chuckles in remembrance of just how vehement, competitive and just all around talented Carrie was. Not just at a card game but in soccer, drama and how she had found a passion for law enforcement through their parents. All that potential now a waste, he shakes his head and simply offers, “Carrie always kicked my ass in everything anyway.”

“Hey, mom,” Michael says out of nowhere as he had been silent for some time and Emily and Henry are torn from their reverence. “The team had two working profiles?”

“Uh, yeah, because of the nature of the crime we weren’t entirely sure at the time if it was one of opportunity or not,” Emily offers in clarity for her son. She starts to continue but closes her mouth, thinking better of it.

The astute teenager keys in on his mother’s censorship, seeing clearly that she seems to be holding something back and he recognizes this.

“But you don’t think it was?” Michael asks astutely and Emily is shocked at the boy inept attention. The boy could be a profiler himself.

“Well, the more I looked at it and truly profiled the crime,” the older woman offers. She sighs and then wonders if it was best to have this conversation with her son but she relents. “It seemed to me to be more personal, probably someone who was aware of Carrie who lives around here.”

“How else would they have known the plateau was secluded enough, right?” Michael offers and Henry watches his mother and brother debate the crime. It was hard to hear but he knew the objectiveness they both had when it came to problem solving. He respected them enough for it but tries his best to drown it out.

“Yeah, well, it isn’t a heavily traveled trail,” Emily says with a shrug. “There’s a lot of private property surrounding it so we looked into a few locals but nothing ever came of it.”

“Hmm,” Michael grumbles, considering his mother’s insight into their investigation. He chews on the skin surrounding his cuticles, debating. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion of agreement with his mother. It made sense.

Emily studies her son’s expression, watching the myriad of emotions playing over his face but it becomes too much for her to dwell on. She feels a slight shake in her hand, an adrenaline and need for motion set in herself and she stands suddenly from the coffee table as she set across from Henry.

“Enough of that and I don’t think H wants to get his ass beat again,” Emily says with a sly smile and a light laugh. “So how about I make a pizza and maybe we can watch something?”

“Actually I was hoping I could take Michael to that bar and grill that Carrie loved tonight,” Henry says with a shrug. “I don’t know, it just feels appropriate with saying goodbye and all.”

Emily sighs, she had hoped to have the boys to herself tonight but she understood the need of the brothers to bond in their own way, in their own grief over losing their sister. So she nods. “Fine but Henry you are not allowed to drink under any circumstances because you are watching your brother, do you hear me?”

Henry rolls his eyes and agrees reluctantly as he always did. He was a good kid but he also knew that he was his own man and could make his own adult decisions, not always having to adhere to what his mothers demanded of him anymore.

As Michael and Henry prepare to leave, Emily makes her way into the kitchen. The shaking in her hands, muscles and joints had grown more apparent. It didn’t take long to figure out what her body is craving and she stares at the collection of half-empty liquor bottles on her counter, bourbons, cognac, wine, gin, anything she could stomach was there. She starts to wander towards the counter when she hears the boys enter the room.

“Alright, mom, we’re gonna head out,” Henry says, looking almost expectantly. “Can I have your keys?”

Emily goes to grab the keys off the hook but yanks them away before Henry has the opportunity to grab them. “Absolutely no drinking whatsoever,” Emily reiterates. “Or I will personally oversee your processing at the station for DUI, am I clear?”

“Yes, Agent Prentiss,” Henry mocks a salute and takes the keys that are finally offered to him, kissing his mom on the cheek and then Michael gives her a hug. “Thanks, mom.”

“Just don’t be out late,” Emily adds as the boys make their way to the door. She hears the muttered ‘Yeah, yeah’s as they exit and the front door shuts. Alone again, like always.

Her eyes roam to her temptation again, the edge she feels she could and often easily falls off of. But she thinks about her promise to JJ and what that meant. She was solely responsible for her two boys for as long as they were there and she couldn’t live with herself if something happened to them too. Hell, JJ would probably kill her before she ever got the chance to do it herself. No, she had to take responsibility again. It had been so long that she’s not entirely sure how to do that. But she remembers something.

She goes to reach for her cellphone and dials a once familiar number, one not frequently used as often anymore. She had pushed most everyone away but she had just talked to the man a few days ago and they had caught up. She knew he was nearby on vacation yet she had managed to avoid seeing him as she was so good at doing.

As the genius answers the phone, Emily replies, “Hey, Reid, are you still at Gideon’s cabin?”

* * *

The sun had seeped below the trees shattering hues of orange and pinks over the blue sky and grey atmosphere of the little town. Henry and Michael had driven around for a while jamming to their variety of selected tunes, Michael’s preference being Linkin Park which Henry gave him nothing but shit for. Henry loved Kendrick Lamar and rap music and Michael groaned but they enjoyed the togetherness. It reminded Michael of moments from the previous summer when it felt like all they had was each other with their mothers still working long hours and tirelessly so.

So they had just driven around the small square of a town reliving moments of their childhood, a park that was now a little worse-for-wear where they had played as kids with Caroline and the such. This being the chosen place of family vacations was odd but nothing was normal about their family from the get-go. And they had enjoyed adolescence here.

It being a Saturday night, the town was alive with people from the mountains and surrounding areas like Henry and Michael had come from. The streets filled to the brim with cars and there was essentially only parallel parking available. So they had to park a ways down from their destination but they didn’t mind the walk. So as they exited the vehicle and made their way to what used to be the staple of the town, a bar and grill by the unique name of _Eugenius_ but now the flow of people seemed to be heading in the opposite direction to some other new staple in town and Henry watches them go, wondering about the draw of the place.

Michael stops however, his eyes drawn in on a faded and used up poster plastered on a brick wall about a block down from where they aimed to be. Henry is a few steps ahead before he traces backwards to see what had grabbed his younger brother’s attention. In the year that had passed the poster had molded over covered in the running ink and glue turned bluish green over time. The poster having been placed there by locals in the two days that the girl had vanished. The words ‘Missing: Have you seen me?’ bleed in red ink down the image of their deceased sister.

For Henry, it almost didn’t feel real as the image didn’t capture the essence of his sister. Michael, on the hand, was drawn into himself, wishing he had spent more time with his older sister as she had been so busy with her rebellion and popularity around school. It was the regret that led him to read the intense details of those terrifying files and it was regret that lead his blue eyes to now stare into the faded hazel of his sister’s.

The eldest boy slaps his brother on the shoulder and draws him out of his trance, he nods his head down the way of the street with a simple crooked smile. He offers, “Come on, let’s go have some fun.”

So they make their way down the street and nearly make it to Eugenius. They’re vaguely aware of a car escaping a nearby parking spot but they are brought to a complete stop by the loud, bellowing sounds of a pickup truck peeling its way into the spot like the lucrative territory it was. The man falling out of the truck surprises them, the sight of the tall, sandy and scruffy man of the mountains from the day before. Hastings seems to recognize them as he exits the truck.

“Sorry about that, boys,” the tall man offers with a shrewd smile. They realize another man exits the pickup, following his friend towards the same destination the boys were headed. “But you two need to learn to stay the hell out of the way.”

The two men continue on their way but Michael and Henry stay in their spots for now. The shorter, quieter foreign man that they don't recognize jokes as he asks, “Sure you don’t want to try and find a spot at Primadonna’s?”

“Fuck Primadonna’s,” Hastings says as he spits and then makes his way into the building, swinging the doors open wide as they enter.

Michael and Henry both take in a deep breath that they’d held, remembering the terrifying fear they had felt from the man’s actions the night before. The brothers simply share a look before making their own way in.

* * *

Reid had shown up at the cabin not long after receiving the call. And not much had been revealed or said as to why Emily had asked him to come but he was fine with that to a certain extent. He knew that something was stewing inside his old friend but he couldn’t be sure what exactly that was. The genius not ignorant to how on edge his former unit chief seems to be.

So when Emily simply asks if he would take her to an AA meeting, the man pieces together the puzzle. He realizes that the brunette’s solitude wasn’t so much to do with grief as it was to hide away in the shame she felt in herself, to drown some sort of guilt she had buried and burned away with her daughter. So he just nods and they make their way out to drive into the small town.

Emily knew that on Saturday nights the town was lit up with many locals coming in and having a night out at the local bars and restaurants and as they pass Eugenius, she thinks of her boys among the patrons. Hell, if it was any other Saturday Emily might have joined the residents in drinking herself into oblivion. But if the older woman was anywhere near on the fence about doing this then the thought of the boys reinforces the idea. She needed to do this, she needed to do this so she could protect her boys and be there for them in the ways she had failed her daughter.

She’s surprised to find the man who usually was spouting off at the mouth random statistics or asking questions quiet at the moment. She supposes that in his older age, Reid had grown less curious and more understanding - perhaps more so after having lost Carrie. He seems to be reverent to the fact that Emily had essentially admitted to having a problem and that she needed help. She knew however that if there was one person who could truly understand that then it was Spencer and he’d never hold it over her.

When they enter the recreational area of the small church, Emily grows all the more uneasy. But they find the meeting about to start and slip into the back of the room. Emily’s hands seem to rub themselves together; they could’ve rubbed themselves raw honestly. She was nervous and anxious in the place of unfamiliarity with all of the unfamiliar faces around her. Spencer reaches over however and grabs at one of her hands and holds it to stop the roaming madness and he shoots her a reassuring, comforting smile.

She knows that smile, it’s the one that says ‘I know this is hard but I’m proud of you.’ The dark-haired woman wishes he wouldn’t be. There was nothing to be proud of and she had a sinking feeling that this was all temporary anyway. Nothing could stop the darkness inside from sneaking in these days and grabbing ahold her being. Alcohol tended to be the only thing that drowned it out however.

Her thoughts settle only momentarily as the meeting begins and Emily simply watches on apprehensively.

* * *

A beer is placed on the table before Henry and he nods at the waitress in gratitude. Michael eyes him a little warily and shakes his head. “I’ll claim to know nothing when mom murders you, you know?”

Henry just laughs and shrugs at his brother’s callous joke. They quietly eat their food that had been delivered at their table and Michael takes in the surroundings of the building. He gets why Carrie enjoyed the place. It had a bunch of rock memorabilia and a constant stream of classic rock eminating from the speakers. It wasn’t your typical small town bar and grill with sports on in the background. It looked to once be a lively place and he is surprised by the lack of people in the joint. This seemed to him the obvious choice to enjoy a drink and a meal.

The boys talk about their sister and their moms but the conversation is light, nothing too serious. They’d had enough heaviness this weekend already. They were just enjoying each other’s company. Henry remembering a time that he and Carrie came to the place, his sister was just sixteen at the time and she had tried to buy a drink with her fake ID and it had backfired royally on her. Their mothers had found out about it, as the FBI agents always did and the girl was grounded for two weeks and the ID was confiscated.

Michael reaches over and grabs at the beer that the older boy had ordered and quickly takes a swig but instantly regrets it as the bitterness touches his tongue for the first time, his face sours. His elder brother laughing and it is his turn to regale, “Now I’m the one who won’t be responsible if mom smells that on your breath.”

“Well, that was disgusting anyway but I thought in the spirit of Carrie that I should at least give it a try,” Michael waves off. “Mom’s not a bloodhound, I’ll be fine.”

“Then you’ve clearly never wreaked the full havoc of mom, young one,” Henry smiles and jokes. He then glances over his shoulder at the billiard tables set up in the back. He briefly notices that that’s where Hastings and his buddy had set up enjoying their drinks but he doesn’t mind so much. He figures Hastings will mind his business and they theirs. “Well, in the spirit of Carrie, we should tap into her favorite pastime, competition and she never turned down a game of pool.”

Michael looks over, seeing the man who had attacked him the previous night and shifts awkwardly in his seat.

The elder boy sees his brother’s trepidation and hesitation and shrugs, “Come on, you know big brother won’t let anything happen, let’s go.”

Henry stands from the table but notices Michael makes no moves out of fear. The man with glasses simply raises his shirt and reveals the pistol set on his hip and Michael smiles at this. The older boy nods his head towards the table and the younger follows feeling a little more at ease with his brother’s protection.

* * *

As the meeting continues, Emily feels the crawling in her skin and the itch for a drink. It becomes all the more apparent when a woman not far from the former unit chief’s age talks about losing her son in Afghanistan and how she had descended into drinking because of it. Emily feels Spencer squeeze her hand tighter but that is all she is able to feel. She doesn’t let herself hear the words in the woman’s story and the meaning behind it, she doesn’t let the lesson sink in and she doesn’t let herself feel the grief either for herself or for this woman.

Instead she starts to lose herself in a blur of a memory from a year prior when someone else had tried and desperately failed at grabbing ahold of her before she lost herself completely.

_Rossi pulls up to one of the myriad of churches in the small town. This one just so happened to be the largest, nearly a cathedral and Emily's eyes go wide at the sight. Her eyes piercing across at the driver's seat where the older man resided. He knows the look all too well. He knows if Emily Prentiss' eyes could kill, he'd more than likely be dead right now._

_"Rossi..."_

_"Humor me, Emily," Rossi says getting out of the car while Prentiss stays seated in the passenger's seat, stock still. The older man makes his way around the vehicle and opens Emily's door, giving her a hard look but she stays staring dead ahead out amongst the grey scenery at nothing._

_"I haven't been in a church unless it was work related in over twenty years, Rossi and there's good reason for that," Emily says through gritted teeth._

_"Don't you think that your daughter's sake is a good enough reason to amend that just this once?" Rossi asks and the unit chief furrows her brow in confusion at the man's inference. He nods towards the door. "Come on, I have something to show you."_

_They barely make it through the foyer and into the sanctuary before Emily stops cold in her tracks, her eyes distracted by a crucifix to her left. A mold of Jesus hanging from the cross is depicted in the small sculpture on the wall. Her eyes falling to the ligature marks on the savior's wrists, the cuts and bruises upon the man's body and the piercing of his side._

_"You ever think about it?" Emily asks vaguely, still staring into the form. "The parallels with the victims we deal with on a regular bases being tied, beaten, stabbed and executed as coldly as Jesus was? Like Caroline was."_

_She finally breaks from her stare off with the savior's form and turns back to Rossi and finds his face stone cold and dead serious at her insinuation. She sees the recognition in his eyes though and scoffs, her eyes darting upwards in nervous habit and her tongue sticking out to wet her dry lips._

_"Of course, you have," she regales absurdly, shaking her head. "You're Rossi."_

_They move on and Emily's head remains mostly downcast, feeling a bit of shame in the presence of the place but occasionally her eyes loom high around the cathedral as they make their way slowly down the aisle. She shakes her head in the silence; it’s not awkward because this is Rossi. This was her friend and mentor and nothing was off limits, including silence. It was something they were both surprisingly good at. Knowing what lies in the tension there, the unspoken words speaking louder than anything. They didn't need more than that, especially at a time like this._

_She stops suddenly, irritation getting the best of her. Though the silence was comfortable, Emily was not. Her skin crawling as they made their way through the religious building. The dulled sun was barely shining through the stained glass windows. She can't help but spit in questioning, "Why did you bring me here, Rossi? What does this have to do with Carrie?"_

_Rossi looks at her and offers a hand out towards the nearest pew, placing a hand on Emily's bicep to guide her, "Take a seat, Emily."_

_"I don't understand," she says as she sits as asked but her eyes remain mostly unseeing of the place. They dart nervously about, for some reason actively avoiding looking towards the front of the room, at the altar._

_"You've been shutting down on us, Prentiss," Rossi regales suddenly and Emily scoffs. "It's been four days since we found her and you hardly say anything of note if it doesn't involve the case, you’re not even talking to your wife."_

_"Well, you've seen her recently, haven't you, Dave?" Emily says with a humorless laugh. It's no joke. JJ was as good as the walking dead these days, roaming around in a daze and generally only coming out of it in fits of crying or lashing out in some way and the brunette didn't know how to fix it. She didn't know how to fix any of it. Not anymore. "There's nothing really to say, I’m just here."_

_"You've been shutting down because that's what you know to do," Rossi says. "It's instinct because you are the more paternal parent between you and JJ, you're very focused and level-headed but you can't make sense of anything that's going on right now and that's understandable. Because nothing does or can make sense in all this, none of it. But you also are feeling like you're not worthy to feel any of it either, aren't you?"_

_"What are you talking about?" Emily asks with a shake of her head, almost in denial. "I don't know what you're talking about."_

_"Yes, you do because you are fighting like hell every second of every day to stay strong and keep everything together and controlled in the midst of the chaos of your life between your job, your wife and sons that you aren't allowing yourself to grieve and recognize the fact that you just lost your daughter too, Emily," Rossi explains. "You may not even know you're doing it cause you're just trying to be here for JJ, she's more emotional than you and more outwardly expressive with her grief so you comfort her and deny yourself your own. Why is that, Emily?"_

_"Cause I love her, Rossi," Emily shoots back like his inference is absurd so she shrugs. "What are you getting at?"_

_"You may be here physically but you’ve disconnected yourself emotionally almost completely, from us, from JJ and most of all from Caroline," Rossi states. "You've only been allowing yourself to see JJ as Caroline's mother since her death because she is the more obvious choice, Caroline looked so much like her but she was your daughter too, Emily. JJ may have given birth to Caroline but who else got up in the middle of the night when she'd cry because JJ was too tired to feed her? Who took her to preschool on her first day? Who took her to soccer practice and showed up at every damn game she possibly could? Who supported her when she joined the drama club and was the first one to give a standing ovation when she didn't even have a speaking role? Who took a million and one pictures the day she graduated from high school? That was you, Emily."_

_Emily doesn't know when the tears started but they had, slowly and silently making their way down her cheeks. She shakes her head but she doesn't wipe them away in shame, no. She lets them fall, she lets them fall with dignity and with grace and with her head held high cause she knew Rossi was right in some ways but she wasn't sure she was ready to face those facts. Not yet._

_"Why are we here, Dave?" Emily asks breathlessly, gulping back the emotion in her throat and through the tears. "So you can profile me?"_

_"Because I know you refuse to talk to the big man upstairs," Rossi says with elevated eyebrows. "I thought maybe you'd at least talk to her, for a little while anyway."_

_Rossi points at the altar where the myriad of candles encased in their red glass remained, many were lit and in the center, there stood a picture of Caroline. One of her senior photographs where her shoulder length blonde hair fell easily and a wide smile, all teeth showed themselves. She remembered the photo particularly because Caroline hated smiling with her teeth; it was a rare occasion that they'd ever get a photo with more than a subtle smirk from the teen. But the one's where she bared her beautiful pearly whites were to be held near and dear, to be cherished. Emily gasps at the sight._

_"It's a small town and word gets around," Rossi parlays. "They've had it up since she went missing, I came here after we found her cause I just had to have some time alone, to clear my head a little so I thought maybe you could do the same, spend some time with your daughter, Emily, talk to her, you don't have to say goodbye, but just talk to her for a while. I'll be outside."_

_As Rossi leaves, Emily sits there feeling alien to all her surroundings but her eyes keep falling to the little podium of candles and her daughter's photo. It takes an embarrassing amount of time for her to make her way up there and when she finally does she is stunted still. Not really knowing how to do this or what to say. So she shifts her weight from foot to foot in nervous energy. Then she stares the photo down and the dam bursts._

_"You know, everything was so complicated before you came along, for me and your mom and Will," Emily starts. "We had Henry but we wanted more kids, things were understandably strained with your dad though but he still agreed, agreed to give us more children, to be your father and to being a part of your life."_

_"But when the moment came, truly came that we found out your mom was pregnant and it was a girl, everything seemed to settle and calm down but I was terrified," the brunette woman admits. "I was so terrified because I knew what the world could do to a girl, I see it every day in my line of work and even experienced it firsthand, why do you think I didn’t want to let you join the FBI? So knowing that, I didn't know if I could handle raising a little girl."_

_"Then you were born and I just- I wasn't so scared anymore cause yes, you were small and delicate but," Emily shakes her head. "I quickly found out that you weren't as delicate as I thought, you were so fearless and nothing was ever gonna stop you, you would get right in there with Henry, rough-house with your brothers and you were the toughest little thing I’d ever seen."_

_"Maybe somewhere in your teen years with all your rebellion and all that defiance I started believing that you didn't need me anymore," Emily says as tears start to well in her eyes again. "I thought that you were so independent and that no matter what, nothing could break you but I was wrong and I- I still needed to protect you and I failed, I failed you."_

_The unit chief lets the tears fall freely, the walls had been breached momentarily and the room was filling with water. But Emily knew she could easily plug the holes, compartmentalizing this all. And that this was temporary cause as soon as she walked outside of the four walls of this foreign sanctuary that they would be as strong as ever. She looks at the picture once more._

_"So I'm not here asking for forgiveness from you or some higher power because I know that will never come, I can't even forgive myself for it," the woman admits, looking in the still eyes of her daughter. "All I'm asking is that you give me a chance at some form of redemption; at justice for you because I swear to god I will wreak havoc upon whoever thought they could take the fight out of my little girl."_

_Emily sighs now, shaking her head and thinking it a little ridiculous to be asking something of her dead teenaged daughter but it was all she had. "I just need help, Carrie, because I need to know who did this to you so I can... Just please lead me in the right direction and I will make sure that they rot in hell."_

_She doesn't know when she had suddenly felt the anger build inside of her, the walls quickly reappearing and she looks at the photo again. So ridiculous the idea that any candle lit vigil or prayer would soothe this over or heal all wounds. What Emily Prentiss knew was that justice is the only thing that she would allow herself to seek anymore so she had asked, as ridiculous as it was._

_The dark-haired woman reaches over and takes the senior photo in her hand, she stares at it, her hands a little shaky, her eyes threatening tears again but she vehemently shakes her head. She dips the edge of the photo into one of the burning red candles and watches the picture burn away slowly as she twists and turns it in her hand. She knew she was gambling everything seeking redemption through justice. But if she knew anything, she knew she would never stop until she caught the fucker who had done this to her daughter. So she chances playing with the fire._

_Dropping the remaining bit of the portrait into the flame and watching it quickly fall to ashes. She sighs and walks out of the cathedral, having found no catharsis and no end to her sorrow or fury and grief._

Emily returns to her surroundings, her chest tight with anxiety and her eyes darting around the room. She sees the similarly aged woman in front of her mourning her son and speaking of God’s love and forgiveness and _redemption_.

And Emily can’t take it anymore; she is up and out of her seat, out of the building within seconds. Reid stands to follow, offering apologetic hands to the crowd that had turned to see his friend’s exit, including the sad and perhaps understanding eyes of the grieving mother.

* * *

The two brothers were enjoying their game of pool, Henry was beating Michael but the younger boy didn’t mind so much. He was never as competitive as his older siblings unless it was a video game. The only time he and his brother had come to blows was over a particularly heated match of Call of Duty but even then it wasn’t too serious.

Henry and Michael both are astutely aware that Hastings and his buddy, by this point quite liquored up, had made their way over to the pool table next to theirs. The younger boys simply keeping to themselves and out of the older, drunken men’s way. They can’t help overhearing the conversation that the two men are holding as they start up their game however.

“I’m pretty sure I was certifiably insane for a while there,” Hasting’s buddy says. He was a little shorter than Hastings himself but built like a brick wall. He looked of Middle Eastern dissent with his head closely shaved. A seemingly angry man.

“Oh, come on, aren’t we all at some point or another,” Hastings offers nonchalantly. The brothers continue their game. Henry had landed his last two solid balls into the corners and all that remained for him to champion was the black 8-ball. “When was this?”

“Last summer after I got back,” the buddy regales taking a swig of his beer. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember me coming to visit you off my rocker. What I did to that girl though, it felt like freedom.”

“Well, with that pretty blonde hair and those eyes,” Hastings says with a smile and a shrug. “Who could blame you, right?”

Hearing this Henry misses the white of the cue ball all-together in his shot, he scratches the table a little in his overcompensating anger. The older boy looking up to make eye contact with his younger brother who is frozen solid and staring at the back of the middle eastern man’s head, wide-eyed. They both seem to be on the same wave-length of thought process. Both feeling the overwhelming realization.

“I don’t care what anyone says though, she enjoyed it,” the buddy continues in his bragging. “Out in the middle of the fucking woods, I mean that’s romantic!”

“Always the charmer, Tivon,” Hastings offers and tips his drink to his friend.

Henry stands from his position over the pool table. Well aware of the shorter man standing close behind him and intentionally lets the cue stick fall too far behind him, hitting the man in the back. The man named Tivon turns around in offense.

“Hey, watch where you shove that stick, man,” Tivon says stepping to the shorter blonde boy who had turned around, raising his hands in surrender.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry,” Henry offers in appeasement. Michael watches on cautiously, worried of the outcome of this confrontation and knowing that his brother was anything but sorry. “Look, let me make it up to you, you like magic, huh?”

Henry waves his hand in front of the bulky man’s confused face which seems to be getting angrier as seconds pass. “You better get on with it, boy, or get out of my face.”

“Look, I learned this trick from my uncle, watch,” Henry says and proceeds to go and pull something from behind Tivon’s ear but instead the defiant blonde boy indents his nails into the man’s face and scratches him down the side of his cheek. Blood oozing from the acquired wounds. Michael’s eyes go impossibly wider at the sight.

The Middle Eastern man winces in pain but his fist instinctively lands hard and brutally on Henry’s own cheek. The boy with glasses is thrown back against his own pool table but starts laughing. Tivon smashes the glass of his beer bottle over Henry’s blonde hair and lands a few more blows to young man’s face before Hastings is around the table and takes the reins of his friend.

“Tivon, Tivon, let me handle this,” Hastings offers, holding his hands up to try and calm his friend down. “These boys are nothing but a pain in my ass so they better get the fuck out of here before I call my friends down at the station and take them in for assault.”

“Oh, I’ll process them, alright,” and Tivon goes for another hit, landing squarely in Henry’s ribcage. But Hastings has ahold of his buddy’s shirt collar again. While Michael has done nothing but stand stark still in terror as his brother gets beat.

“Look, these kids got FBI as parents; you don’t want to fuck with them, alright?” Henry hears Hastings murmur to his friend. “Especially after everything, you get me?”

“I didn’t start this,” Tivon offers to his friend who nods. “This punk ass kid stepped to me.”

“Yeah, I started it,” Henry says with a weak laughter, blood running from his head, lip and nose. “I scratched you like a little bitch.”

Hastings then turns on the boy and grabs him by the collar and meets Henry’s bruised blue eyes, “Listen, if you ever want to live to see your mommas again, I suggest you get the fuck out of here and now.”

“Come on, H,” Michael finally finds his feet, throwing his cue stick down on the pool table and grabbing his brother by his arms. The older boy unable to resist spitting one last mouth full of blood towards the two men but luckily, Hastings restrains his friend. The tall man feeling his own anger as his nostrils flare, knuckles going white.

And Henry and Michael make their way out into the warm dark of the night and away from the bar to their vehicle. The eldest bloodied and bruised but he smiles at himself, feeling a sense of accomplishment in his deed. Henry is grateful that all the adrenaline coursing through his veins allows him to feel no pain.

Yet Michael is nothing if not confused at his brother’s actions, thinking of only two things. They might have just found the man who killed his sister and wondering if he was gonna live long enough to explain this fact to his dark-haired mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little side note, yes, that is Tivon Askari and yes he is meant to be a little out of character and more homegrown.
> 
> the title of this chapter (and the fic) comes from "playing with fire" by brandon flowers.


	8. climbing but the walls keep stacking up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're coming up on the end, folks. things from here on out are expected to get hot, heavy and violent so be prepared. two more chapters after this and the story is finished. it's taken long enough, huh?
> 
> anyway, enjoy the misery i always bestow upon you...

As she entered the small cabin, Emily makes a straight shot for the kitchen barely aware of the tall, lanky genius following her in slowly. She grabs a nearby glass and pours the closest alcohol to her into it, she downs the drink languidly more out of need than want. She feels her rattling nerves ease slightly. Reid sighs as he watches the woman down the glass from the entrance of the kitchen with his hands in his pockets.

“Emily, we need to talk about this,” Reid says quietly in concern. “I knew you drank but I didn’t know it had gotten this bad, none of us did. Does JJ know?”

“Oh, she knows,” Emily shoots back bitterly. “She knows firsthand, why do you think I’m here instead of at home right now?”

“We all thought you came out here to be alone and focus on Carrie’s case,” the younger man says with a shrug of his shoulders. “We didn’t know things were so strained, JJ doesn’t talk about it and just said that you needed space after everything.”

“Well, she gave me space, alright,” Emily says, pouring another glass of the brown liquor. “We’re not together anymore and I don’t know that we ever could be again.”

Reid is a little taken aback by this fact, he had watched them from the moment they met and they had come to signify the kind of love he hoped to find some day. “I don’t believe that’s true.”

“Our daughter’s dead and there’s no taking back the hurts we’ve put on each other because of it, Reid,” the dark-haired woman says with a shrug. “I hate to shatter whatever fantasy you have built up of us in that brain of yours but it isn’t real.”

“Emily, you’re both hurting and I think if you both looked at this objectively then you’d see that all of this is neither of your faults,” Reid offers wide-eyed, hoping to encourage his old friend. “Whatever hurt and blame has been placed has been due to grief, not because you don’t love each other.”

“Love’s got nothing to do with it and trust me, objectivity went out the window a long time ago,” Emily fires back. “So whatever love there was is long gone.”

“That’s not true, I see it in JJ’s eyes every time she talks about you still,” the genius regales. “Whenever she tells a story or talks about you and the kids, I see it, it’s still there and I know you still have it too, you just never let yourself feel much of anything anymore because you’re literally drowning yourself.”

“Leave it alone, Reid,” Emily finally snaps, slamming the glass down on the counter in front of her. “There’s nothing you or anyone could say that-”

The door to the cabin suddenly opens wide and the two blonde boys stumble through, Michael attempting to help his larger brother into the old house. Emily looks through the doorway that Reid stands in and as he turns his thin body towards the scene, she sees the blood and wounds gracing her son’s face. Her stomach drops to its pits and her eyes go wide.

Henry falls away from his younger brother and towards the small dining room off to the left, he seems frantic as he searches about the piles of evidence and files. Emily finally making her way towards the boys and the fear has left a lump in her throat in its wake.

“Henry, oh my god, what the hell happened?” Emily asks just as frantic as the elder boy seems and Reid has made his way over as well. Both adults taking ahold of each of his shoulders in support and confusion but the blonde man doesn’t stop in his search.

“Gah, where the hell are they?!” Henry spits in frustration, a little blood making its way out of his mouth as he does so. “Mike, help me find them.”

“No, Henry, what is going on?” Emily inquires vehemently but it falls on deaf ears. Michael finally finds what the two boys seem to be hunting for.

“Here,” Michael says victoriously as he hands his older brother the vile and a fingernail file. Emily and Reid watch on in utter confusion and at a loss as Henry digs something out from beneath the fingernails of his right hand and encase it in the vile, sealing it closed. They let him do whatever it is he needs to, seeing the ardent determination set in the young man. He takes a pen and writes on the outside of the tube with shaky bloody hands, one word, simply a name, ‘Tivon.’

When he is finished, he hands the vile to his mother and falls back into a chair in relief. The pain seems to finally reach and catch up with him as he winces and pants. Emily looks on terrified in her own confusion and taking in the damage done to the bruised, beaten and entirely swollen bloody face of her eldest son, “What the hell happened, son?”

“It’s gonna be alright, mom, everything is going be okay,” Henry says through his heavy breathing, the adrenaline wearing off and he seems tired for all that had transpired. “We got him.”

“What is he talking about, Michael?” the mother of the boys looks to her youngest now, not getting any answers from her more matured son.

“I think we found him, mom,” Michael says in slight amazement, eyes wide in his own disbelief of what had transpired. “I think we found the guy that killed, Carrie, Henry fought him and got his DNA so we can test it.”

“What- how, I don’t understand,” Emily shakes her head but Reid seemed to be checking over Henry, his godson who might as well be his nephew and Henry winces in pain when the man prods at his ribcage.

“Emily, he may have broken some ribs,” Reid says seriously, looking into the deep brown eyes of his friend and he sees the fear there. “He’ll probably be fine but we should get him to a hospital to be checked out.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Emily says and she stands quickly. Her eyes meet back at the blue-hazel of her youngest son again, inquiring the question. “How sure are you?”

“Pretty damn sure, mom,” Michael says with a nod of his head, his jaw clenching and tightening in his anger and resolve.

“Alright, Michael, help me get your brother to a hospital,” Emily says, shooting into motion suddenly. “And Reid, do you think you could get this to the lab at Quantico and get a rush on it?”

Reid takes the vile from Emily’s outstretched hand and he hopes this isn’t a fluke, some sort of false hope in the absolute hopeless situation of the last year for the family. But this was as close to a lead or a suspect as they had gotten so he nods his head in agreement, “Of course.”

“You’re looking for a Middle Eastern man named Tivon,” Henry breathes out through his wince of pain. “Short, stocky and middle-aged, late forties probably.”

“Got it,” Reid says with a nod then quickly starts to make his way out of the cabin but is stopped by Emily calling after him.

“And Reid, don’t tell JJ,” she asks with earnest, her eyes wide and pleading with the man. She knows Reid isn’t good at keeping secrets from his friends especially one that is as close to a sister as he’d ever had. “Just not yet, not until we know how badly he’s hurt, I will call her in the morning.”

“Right,” he reluctantly agrees and wouldn’t have if Emily wasn’t also like a sister to him and he had to trust that she would do what she said she would. He exits quickly and heads straight for Quantico but not before making a call to the woman who calls herself ‘the Oracle’ of the place, Penelope Garcia.

* * *

Emily and Michael had successfully managed to get Henry to the hospital some thirty minutes from the cabin with little harm done. The soon-to-be college graduate was fine but had a couple of bruised ribs and a few stitches were needed to sew up the blonde boy where the beer bottle had met his head. The brunette woman had finally gotten the whole story from her youngest son.

He told her of the beers that Henry had had but the woman wasn’t as angry as he thought she would be, Emily more relieved than anything that her son was okay. The fact that the man that had done this was a friend of Hastings was not lost on the former unit chief. She had wondered how this man played into everything as his name suddenly seemed to be popping up almost everywhere in her life.

The dark-haired woman and the teenaged boy set in the waiting room as Henry was being held overnight for observation but could be released in the morning. So letting the elder boy get some rest, they too tried to repose themselves from the chaos of the evening. Michael had fallen asleep on an uncomfortable bench across from her. She looks at him longingly, shaking her head at the thought of all the events of this weekend.

She checks her phone at regular intervals however, Reid had called and told her that the DNA was being processed and compared to the DNA found on Carrie at Quantico. He also said he had Penelope scouring for information on the man that Henry and Michael had identified but had not come up with much yet. So she waited restlessly with bated breath to find out if this man was in fact the one who had raped and murdered her daughter, who had attacked her son so readily. She wasn’t so sure she could handle the truth of the matter or what she would do if it turned out to be true.

That’s when the former unit chief hears heavyset footsteps making their way down the hall towards the waiting area. It being six in the morning, she hadn’t expected to see the ruffled sight of her wife coming headfirst down the hallway. Emily had yet to call JJ, wanting to wait til a suitable time of the morning to inform her of what had happened the previous night but word gets around fast in the BAU family. She should have known better.

And JJ is pissed, her nostrils flaring, her hair bedraggled in a loose ponytail, clothes quickly gathered and put on are the ones she usually would adorn at the gym. Emily knew it had to have taken the woman an hour-and-a-half to make it to the hospital from DC which meant that she had been woken up in the middle of the night to be told the news which didn’t bode well for her. And it seems in that time that the woman had not calmed down a bit. So when her wife finally makes her way in front of her, Emily stands, looking a little ashamed, ready for the berating she was about to receive and anticipates it.

But the blonde woman doesn’t spout or shoot off immediately; instead she breathes heavily and lets her eyes pierce through Emily’s very soul that is she would be if the brunette woman would even meet her eyes which she can’t. “Why in God’s name am I getting a call at three o’clock in the fucking morning from a frantic Garcia telling me that you and the boys think they’ve found Carrie’s killer and that Henry was in the hospital because of it?”

And there it was, what Emily had anticipated from her wife and she takes it but the dark-haired woman looks over at Michael who seems to stir a little in his slumber, “Will you lower your voice, your teenage son is trying to sleep.”

“I don’t give a fuck if the Queen of England was trying to sleep right now,” JJ says, moving ever closer to her wife’s face, inches away but she lowers her voice to a mere growl with clenched teeth. “Now what the fuck is going on, Emily?”

“Look I was just as surprised as you were okay, the boys wanted to go to Carrie’s favorite restaurant, the bar and grill so I let them take my car to have some time together,” Emily recalls. “Then the boys come stumbling back, Henry beat to a bloody pulp, telling me they think they overheard a guy telling Hastings that he killed Carrie and Henry decided to fight the guy to get some of his DNA to test.”

“What the fuck and where were you during all this, Emily?” JJ asks, angrily and at a complete loss at how this had happened. “I’ll bet you were there at the cabin, getting drunk as usual.”

“No,” Emily fights back, well, it was partly the truth. “I actually called Reid since I knew he was nearby on sabbatical and he came to visit, he was helping me actually.”

“Oh, well, how is Henry?" the blonde woman asks concerned. "Is he okay?” 

“He’s fine, a few stitches and bruised ribs but he’ll be fine,” Emily regales her wife but if JJ had relented momentarily in her anger it seems to return to her full-force.

“I can’t believe you let this happen again,” JJ says with a shake of her head. “Twice in two days, both of our sons get hurt while at your fucking cabin!”

“You were there for one of those incidents if I do recall and begging me to fuck you while it happened,” Emily retorts vehemently and loudly. Michael definitely stirs awake at his mother’s words but he doesn’t move, just listens to his mothers go at it for the millionth time.

“Yeah, well, you can go fuck yourself, Emily,” JJ spits in her wife’s face. “I will not let those boys go within an inch of the cabin ever again and you’ll be lucky if I even let you see them.”

“You’re telling that you’d forbid me from seeing my own sons?” Emily asks bitterly and in utter disbelief at what her wife was saying to her now. “Well, Henry is a grown man who can make his own decisions and Michael will lose what little is left of his family if that happens, is that what you want? You want to tear this family apart more than it already is?”

“I am not the one who tore it apart, it was you who has been so hell-bent on finding who killed Carrie and has now wrapped our sons up in the middle of that,” JJ yells at the dark-haired woman. “So for as long as you keep up this ridiculous need for vengeance or justice or however the fuck you want to explain it away then yes, I do not want you seeing Michael and warping his head with your ideas.”

“Do you even care that we may have actually found the man who killed Carrie?” the small voice of the teenager comes from the bench. Neither woman had noticed the boy awaken and sit up as they screamed at one another. “And you’ll have to send me to some boarding or military school to keep me away from mom.”

“Michael, I really don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation at all,” JJ says seriously, softening only slightly in her approach to her son. “And do I care that you think you found Carrie’s killer? Of course, I do but do I think it’s a reality? That twenty-four hours after you start reading her files you suddenly stumble upon the man who killed her? I think it’s highly unlikely, son, and I think you heard what you wanted to hear.”

“Well, then me and Henry both went insane and heard the same thing then,” Michael says, standing in his anger. “I heard him, momma, he did something to a blonde girl against her will last summer in those woods, and he said it himself!”

“Okay, okay, fine, we will deal with that when and if it’s proved to be true,” JJ says with strictness at her son, still disbelieving of the fact that the boys had seriously found the man who killed Carrie. “But right now, I want you to go see your brother while I see about getting him released so we can go home.”

“But momma-” the boy starts to shout his protest at the woman but JJ clenches her teeth, nostrils flaring and raises her hand, stopping him.

“No, if, ands or buts this time, Michael,” JJ says with gravity to her son. “There will be no arguing this away, this is the final straw and you and your brother will be coming home with me.”

“Wow, you really are a cold-hearted bitch, aren’t you?” Michael says with anger, shaking his head. JJ just stares at him, unbothered this time around because she knew she was justified in her demands. “No wonder mom left you because I’d leave too if I could.”

As Michael starts to walk off towards the hospital room, Emily shouts and grabs the boy’s attention again, “Michael, don’t start and your mom is right, it’s too dangerous for you to be at the cabin right now but I will call you soon, okay?”

Michael looks at his mother with sad blue eyes and nods and walks down the hallway to Henry’s room. JJ shakes her head in utter disbelief and turns back to her wife, “Now you’ve turned my own son against me and he hates me, nice job, Em.”

“I didn’t do anything, JJ,” Emily offers and it was the truth but she guesses that doesn’t so much matter anymore. “The boy has a mind of his own and you’re right, he doesn’t entirely understand everything that’s happened, hell, I don’t even know if I do anymore.”

“Well, what I do know is that come first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll be filing the papers,” JJ says with finality. Her mind finally made up in the chaos that remained of their marriage and thinking it best to end it here and now. “I think it’s best for the boys if there’s nothing left in the middle here between me and you and I’ll be filing for sole custody of Michael, now I think it’s best if you leave.”

“JJ, please, you can’t take the boys from me,” Emily says, emotion welling in her voice surprising both JJ and herself. This was the most emotion JJ had honestly seen from the woman since the death of their daughter and it almost makes her resend her statements. “They’re all I have left.”

“Yeah, well, they’re all I have left too,” JJ says, gulping down the knot in her throat that had appeared at the sight of Emily Prentiss looking broken before her. “And you have proven time and again, between the drinking, leaving and now this that you are unfit to be a parent to either of them anymore and I cannot risk losing them too.”

“So that’s it then?” Emily asks but she knows it to be true, she knew JJ was serious. There were no empty threats laced in the weight of her tone. This was the unspoken line and they had far exceeded it now. There was no going back. “What if this guy really did kill Carrie?”

“Then you’ll have all you’ve ever wanted and what you’ve been searching for all this time; justice,” JJ says bitterly. “So you be sure to let us know what the results of the DNA tests are and we’ll deal it then.”

“Right,” Emily nods and looks away, she is shocked by the turn of events, all that had transpired under the 48 hour window of one weekend. “Well, I’ll see you at Henry’s graduation next week.”

“Sure,” JJ nods shortly and then walks off to the nurse’s station with nothing furthermore to say. Now inquiring as to whether or not her oldest son could be released.

Emily Prentiss simply walks out of the hospital with nothing left to fight for yet a sliver of hope that maybe she will find justice. Or rather, her sons had found justice for her. But now with a sinking feeling in her gut, she doesn’t believe that there could ever truly be such a thing.

* * *

Emily had not been this bad in a while or that she can remember anyway. On the way back from the hospital, she had found the flask that she kept hidden away in a tiny compartment in her console. It had taken her less than the trip back to kill what was in the metal container, so she stops in town on her way back to the cabin. She first hits Primadonna’s but the crowds bother her so she stumbles her way over to Eugenius and here she finds the quiet solace to drink her sorrows away.

She was so drunk that she had lost track of the time and it was nearly dark as she made her way out of the bar, most certainly too drunk to drive but she considered herself an expert on the matter by this point. Besides she still had her old badge from the FBI and usually that did the trick for turning away any cops that tried to pull her over. It was a sad reality but the truth of the matter. This was not her first drunken rodeo around here.

The dark-woman had almost entirely forgotten that she had placed the pistol on her hip as they’d left for the hospital the previous night, her paranoia knowing no bounds at this point, until it was jutting into her hip on the way home. She had been anxiously waiting to hear back from Reid, Garcia, hell, anyone at Quantico that could give her the answers about the DNA results but she knew they’d call her as soon as they had them. She was frustrated however. She needed to know, she needed the justice, vengeance. Hell, JJ had been right, that’s all this was and that’s all she had wanted anymore. It was true but the taste she had gotten of the family she’d left behind over the weekend had also left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. It had left her wanting more, more that she could no longer have if JJ had a say in it.

She guesses it was true what they say, ‘you never know what you got til it’s gone.’ Emily laughs ruefully at this. She hated thinking of life this way, like some book of quotes come true. She’s laughing so hard in fact that the woman nearly loses the road in her land rover as she rounds the last bend to the cabin but she corrects herself just in time. The woman is a little disturbed by how her heart had evened out and was barely pumping blood faster than usual at the near brush with death. The former unit chief tightens her grip on the steering wheel, knuckles white as she speeds her way up the last leg to the cabin.

Her eyes fall upon the foreign beaten old pickup in the gravel of her driveway. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce who it could be however. She knew this was coming somewhere deep down, if she thought about it. She knew she would have to deal with the man who had been running into her family all weekend but had somehow managed to escape the former unit chief’s presence. Emily easily walks past the truck, not even glancing a look his way until the man makes his way out and grabs her by the arm, turning her around but the brunette has her pistol out, aimed at the man’s skull just as quickly. She may be drunk but nothing broke her of the muscle memory of her intense training.

“What the hell do you want, Hastings?” Emily mutters through gritted teeth.

“I came here to tell you to keep that whore-of-a-wife of yours and those bastard sons away from me and my friends,” Hastings warns her and the brunette actually laughs a little as she rips her arm from his tight grip.

“Shouldn’t I be warning you to stay the hell away from them?” she asks rhetorically, gun still aimed at the ready. “You’re the one who has been assaulting them all weekend, have you not?”

“Your boy was on my property and I was within my rights, and I barely even touched your other kid last night, in fact I probably saved his goddamn life,” Hastings regales but the older woman looks skeptical at the man. “And as for your wife, I don’t know what she told you but I didn’t lay a damn hand on her, hell, I would’ve liked to if she wasn’t such a bitter bitch, thanks to you.”

Emily can’t restrain the blind fury she feels, the alcohol making her quicker to react and she backhands Hastings in the temple with the butt of the pistol at the mention of JJ. The man falls back a bit to his knees, dazed. “Say another word, I dare you because you are on my property now and I believe I’m within my rights to say get the hell off of it.”

The woman starts to make her way back to the cabin but Hastings has a few final words to offer before departing.

“The rumors are true, you really are a bitter drunk old hag, aren’t you, Prentiss?” Hastings says with a laugh. “You keep your kids away from me though because this summer isn’t the first they’ve been disruptive, now is it?”

At the man’s words and insinuation, Emily turns on her heels and as Hastings hadn’t stood up from her blow to him just yet, she cocks the pistol and she aims it down directly between his eyes. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“Your daughter, last summer, she threw one hell of a party, didn’t she?” Hastings offers with a smile. Emily’s eyes go wide, bloodshot more with anger than alcohol now. “One last blowout that could be heard for miles, honestly the cunt wasn’t trying to hide anything and might as well have been asking for what happened to her.”

“And what would you know about that?” Emily asks with guttural tone to her voice, all she can do to keep her finger from pulling the trigger on this brute of a man. “Seems like you’d know a lot about that from what your friend, Tivon, has to say about it, right?”

“Tivon?” Hastings asks with a hearty laugh now. “You think Tivon did that? Clever boys you got there; well, I’d have to say I’m rather jealous then, can’t say I wouldn’t like to do the same to that wife of yours.”

Emily, in the haze of anger and alcohol, presses the entirety of the barrel of the gun to the man’s forehead and the only thing keeping her from killing this man is the fact that he is smiling and might actually enjoy it. So instead she leans down and whispers to the man, “I don’t have a lot to lose right now, Hastings, so I suggest you get the fuck out here before we both do something we’ll regret.”

“Then we have an understanding,” the man says as he hops up from his kneeled position, Emily just now noticing that she left a nick on the man’s eyebrow that was now bleeding. At least he’ll have a mark to remember her by, she thinks. “So long, Agent Prentiss.”

The man rounds his truck, gets in and revs the rough engine of the machine and peels out in reverse and back up to his part of the mountain. Emily can’t make sense of the encounter right now and she doesn’t try to. She hopes the drink that awaits her in the house will reveal some clarity of the situation.

Drink after drink however, Emily loses herself further. Stumbling around and barely able to stand so she falls into the kitchen chair and thinks about the ghosts that haunt this house. She thinks about what Hastings had said about the party last year and wants to curse the man. She’s never been angry at Carrie for drinking and having fun that night despite it all, they were supposed to be in a safe space and at least they weren’t driving. She imagines the girls all here having a good time that Friday night.

The brunette woman casts a glance back at the dusty old cabinet in the kitchen that holds the contents of wine that the girls drank from that night. She stumbles her way over, she pulls out a bottle of wine, one that had been setting out on the kitchen counter, half-empty when they found Carrie missing. It was coincidentally a bottle given to JJ and Emily by her ambassador mother when they found out JJ was pregnant with the baby girl.

So Emily pops the cork of the bottle and pours a heavy glass swaying in her stance. “To my baby girl, Carrie,” Emily says lifting the glass with tears lining her eyes now. “Who could even melt the cold, dead heart of the ambassador.”

Emily downs the entirety of the glass in one fell swoop effortlessly but throws the glass to the side, not even registering its shattering. She now falls to her knees thinking about her mother who had as hard of a time coming to grips with the loss of Carrie as JJ had, the little girl had been unwittingly a peace offering in their relationship and the ambassador loved showering her daughter with items of affection. Since then Emily has rarely heard from her but JJ had mentioned that she called the house often and had spoken to her. Another broken relationship among a dozen, the woman thinks. No love lost if there ever was love there at all.

When Emily’s cellphone rings, the woman is jarred by the sound and stumbles up from her kneeled position over to the phone on the kitchen table with the help of the counter, keeping her steady and upright. She makes her way over and answers the phone without hesitation, when her phone rings nowadays, the former unit chief knew it was important, “Prentiss.”

“Oh, Emily,” Garcia regales over the phone line with endearment. “It’s so good to hear your voice again.”

“Penelope,” Emily says shortly into the line, in the estrangement of the tech analyst’s affection, all she could think at the moment. “What have you got?”

“Right, of course,” Garcia seems thrown by the older woman’s coldness. She’s not sure why, they hadn’t talked since Emily moved out and into the cabin. Not many people had spoken with her. “I’m afraid it’s not good news, Princess.”

Emily’s throat seems to drop into her stomach. This could mean a myriad of things, one no less being that they had found the man that killed her daughter. “Give it to me straight, Garcia.”

“I’m sorry but it’s not him, Emily,” Penelope relays with regret, wishing she had more answers for the mother and former unit chief. “Tivon Askari obviously did something from what the boys said but he wasn’t even in the country when Carrie died.”

“Where was he?” the dark-haired woman asks in her drunken confusion and feeling of loss.

“He was deployed to some redacted place in the middle east,” Garcia says, the older woman could hear the regret in the woman’s voice now. “I’m so sorry, Princess.”

“No, don’t be, JJ was right,” Emily sighs over the line, her voice less stern and serious now. Garcia hears the slight slur to her words and realizes what Spencer had told her to be true. “How is she always fucking right?”

“Emily, don’t you think that maybe it’s time to let go, for a little while at least?” the tech analyst suggest, wary to try and not overstep but with the best of intentions in doing so. “Reid told me what happened between you and JJ, I know it’s not my place but don’t you think it’s time to focus on your family?”

“You’re right, Garcia,” Emily says seriously, soberly despite the alcohol coursing through her veins. “It is none of your business.”

“Emily, listen to yourself, you’re drunk and on the verge of losing everything that’s precious to you,” Garcia relents. “Just think about it.”

“Thanks for the information, Garcia,” Emily says with finality, disconnecting the call before anything further could be said.

As Emily hangs up, Penelope sighs on the other end of the dead line. A few tears make their way to her blue eyes. They had all lost Carrie and in some ways they had all lost Emily too. The tech analyst was still close with JJ despite the fact that the former blonde agent kept her at arm’s length now. But she had been in the dark about the reality of the situation and she hoped that both women would find solace soon. Rather together or apart. She was mourning now more for her old unit chief than the child she had lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from the song "rut" by the killers.


	9. we built this house with our hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, folks, get strapped in cause this is a long one at 9k+ words but one i think you will find relief in due to several comments on the last chapter so just hang in there. one more chapter and then an epilogue and this story is officially kaput!
> 
> a word of warning: this chapter deals with suicide. tread lightly and read with care and safety, my friends.
> 
> any and all mistakes are mine. enjoy and be so kind as to let me know what you think!

The raven haired woman wandered around the empty cabin, she had sobered up a little since the conversation with Garcia. She knew the tech analyst to be right, maybe it was time to put all this to bed and realize that maybe justice didn’t exist in their case, in Carrie’s case. She had to let it go but JJ had been final in what she had said that morning. She wanted nothing to do with Emily Prentiss and her vengeance. But there was no vengeance to be had after all and Emily had lost everything due to it.

Emily ends up on her couch, she picks up the pistol she had used on Hastings earlier and she sighs heavily. All the thoughts and memories weighing down on her. She was still a little drunk and she leans her temple against the pistol in her hand. She wonders if Garcia had called JJ, she thinks it’s more than likely with their being so close to one another. She still figured she owed it to her wife to give her call, to tell her the news if she didn’t already know.

So she picks up her cellphone once again and dials the number she knows by heart. She feels the nausea and dread creep up on her. All that had happened this weekend had been her fault, what had happened to their boys was her fault. She couldn’t justify it away, not anymore. She stares the steel of the metal down as the dial tone trills in her ear.

“Hello?” Emily hears the momentary hopefulness in the woman's voice. She figures her wife must not have checked the caller ID to warrant such a warm greeting. “Emily?”

“Hey, Jayje,” the dark-woman says, more than surprised to hear her wife so receptive to her call after their confrontation earlier.

“The DNA come back yet?” JJ asks and Emily is once again surprised that this bit of information had yet to make it to the blonde woman from the tech analyst. Maybe Garcia was sparing her just a little longer, letting her hold on to some semblence of hope. The older woman’s silence gives JJ her answer however as she straightens herself up in the bed, she sets the book aside that she had been attempting to read but unable to focus on. “Just tell me.”

“He isn’t the guy,” Emily says and then swallows hard when JJ goes completely silent on the other end of the line. The blonde woman lowers her head, taking the phone from her ear as she leans against the back of the hand that held it. The former unit chief is certain she hears a slight whimper from the other side of the line. “Jennifer?”

“Are you sure?” the blonde asks, sounding as if she was composing herself.

“He wasn’t even in the country when it happened,” the older woman replies with finality. “So whatever he did, it didn’t happen here.”

“This is gonna kill the boys, you know?” JJ says as she sniffles slightly, a tear running down the length of her nose as her voice wavers slightly. “After everything that happened, they were so sure.”

“I’m sorry that I caused all this, that I dragged you and the boys into my mess down here,” Emily says seriously, becoming more aware now that this possible news meant just as much to her wife as it did to her and the boys. “I’m so sorry that they got hurt and that it hurt you.”

“It’s more hope than any of us have had in a year,” JJ says with a shake of her head and a deep sigh. “Listen, Em, I gotta go.”

“There was one thing that I was thinking about,” Emily offers before JJ can hang up on her. She stares at the gun she twists in her hands.

“What’s that?” JJ asks shortly.

“I know he isn’t Carrie’s rapist but,” the older woman says her voice cracking a little. “But he is a rapist though; the boys were right about that.”

“What are you talking about right now, Em?” JJ asks, a little wary of what her wife was insinuating.

“Hastings paid me a visit today and I’m sure he knows where we can find Tivon, to ask him some questions,” Emily suggest slowly, a little hesitant. “Maybe we could pay Hastings a visit.”

“No, I can’t do this, Emily,” JJ says, shaking her head vehemently, tears returning to her eyes again.

“You know what Hastings said to me when he visited earlier?” Emily asks rhetorically, not sure that she could repeat the man’s words or that JJ would even care to listen to anything else she had to say.

“He’s an asshole, Em, you can’t listen to him,” JJ says but Emily doesn’t hear before she offers her reply.

“He said Carrie deserved it, that she was practically begging for what happened to her,” the older woman says with anger now, her teeth gritted. “And that he wouldn’t mind doing the same thing to you.”

“Oh my god,” JJ mumbles as something dawns on her, something she had not remembered from the night Hastings had hurt Michael, something the tall man had said to her son that she hadn’t entirely registered in the heat and adrenaline of the moment, now suddenly it all came flooding back. The brunette’s slowed senses don’t quite catch JJ's realization. “I gotta go, Em, I can’t- I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

“Wait, JJ,” the line goes dead before the blonde can hear Emily’s protests, the dark-haired woman confused but more frustrated by the conversation between her and her wife. They had gotten nowhere and Emily was no closer to redeeming her family.

It was sometime later when Emily found herself tearing apart the pistol, cleaning it before reassembling it. She fidgets with the pistol now. For all her lack of sleep, Emily Prentiss was firing on all cylinders. Her mind not being able to slow down long enough to really think about things logically and the fact that she was still sipping the brown bourbon wasn’t exactly helping matters.

Not being able to settle in the silence, she now turns to the playlist on her daughter's iPad that she and the girls had listened to the night Carrie died and had somehow remained at the cabin. So when the song "Setting Sun" by The Chemical Brothers is suddenly shredding through her ears, Emily Prentiss sees the image clearly. She can see her daughter, carefree, celebrating her freedom from high school to the manically upbeat song.

 _You're the devil in me I brought in from the cold_  
_You said your body was young but your mind was very old_  
_You're coming on strong and I like the way_  
_The visions we had have faded away_  
_You're part of a life I've never had_  
_I'll tell you that it's just too bad_

Her brown eyes glossing with tears now can see the flailing of her daughter's limbs, she can see the glass of alcohol that the young girl held, sloshing about and losing its contents as the eighteen-year old danced raucously about the old cabin in the confines and safety of her closest friends.

 _You're coming on strong_  
_You're showing your color_  
_Like a setting sun_

She sees the shiny blonde tresses of her daughter that so resembled her wife's flowing about freely with that so often hidden wide smile on display carelessly in her glee. As the beat continues, images intertwine and intermingle within the former unit chief's mind of what became of her daughter in that carefree, childlike moment. She can't shake the image of her daughter's decomposing body weathering two days of exposure or the blue of her lips, or how wide open her bloodshot eyes had been when she had died.

The older woman takes the gun in her hand and smacks herself on the head a few times. At the endless thoughts of losing Carrie and now JJ and the boys, a tear escapes her deep brown irises. She takes the abandoned glass of liquor on the coffee table and sips it before setting it back on the table. She seems to come to some sort of resolve quickly, that there was only one outcome for her anymore; the only answer to end the pain and suffering, not just for herself but for her wife and sons as well.

Should she try and call JJ back? Maybe call Henry and Michael at least? Should she write a letter, some absurd form of an apology that would ultimately mean nothing in the long run? She knew it would hurt them for a little while but she knew that this was probably what was best for all of them. All she was capable of was making her family and herself miserable anymore. She couldn’t protect them, she couldn’t save them so what use was she at all?

 _I'll tell you that it's just too bad_  
_I'll tell you that it's just too bad_  
_I'll tell you that it's just too bad_  
_I'll tell you that it's just too bad_  
_I'll tell you that it's just too bad_

Emily cocks the gun and places the barrel against her temple with purposeful intent now, her entire body tensing, her mouth and jaw set in a hard line of resoluteness. She closes her eyes and places her finger on the trigger. The only question now entering her mind is if she'd catch the downbeat of the song when she fired.

Then suddenly her phone starts to ring once again and Emily nearly jumps out of her skin but she lets out her first breath of air in minutes. She leans over and picks up the phone with shaky hands, nerves on end with the surprise of who was calling her now.

“JJ?” Emily’s voice wavers shakily as she skeptically answers the phone.

“I thought maybe I could come down there tomorrow,” JJ offers, her voice sounding more strained but more serious than it had when they had spoken a little while before. “Maybe we could talk through some things before I file the papers, you know?”

“I don’t understand,” the dark haired woman says with a furrow of her brow, she leans her forehead against the palm of her hand that still held the pistol. All of the alcohol and stress of the day was wearing on her and a headache was starting to set in. “I thought you said-”

“I know what I said but I don’t think I was exactly being fair to you because I was angry,” JJ says seriously and Emily can almost hear a tinge of regret to her tone but she doesn’t dwell in it. She can’t dwell on anything anymore. It just got her in more trouble. “So I want to come down there, just me and you and talk through some of this, would that be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s-” Emily seemed lost at the turn of events but she most certainly wasn’t going to fight against them. “That’s fine; I think that would be good, yeah.”

“Then I’ll see you in the morning,” JJ nods and then hangs up the phone. Once again, leaving a very confused Emily on the other end, trying to piece together the enigma her wife presented. She cuts the playlist short, she tries to comprehend the conversation she just had but it was all lost in the fog of her mind. She was too tired now to try and figure it out. She would deal with it in the morning.

It doesn’t take long before her sleepless body finally gives into the past few days’ events and she passes out on the couch.

* * *

The former unit chief’s body doesn’t rouse until it physically throws itself from sleep, the bile at the back of her throat more effective than any alarm clock ever thought about being. She makes her way into the bathroom right before the contents of her stomach release themselves.

The cold sweat that the woman feels pooled on her forehead and at the base of her hairline could be the product of numerous things. It could be her body ridding itself of the endless poison she had nearly drowned in yesterday. Or could possibly be from the dream that haunted her sleep. Yet this was a dream she had never had before.

The image of her daughter staring back at her, looking more like JJ than she ever remembered of her in real life, her jaw a little wider set thanks to the LaMontagne genes but she was still Jennifer Jareau made over. The girl- the girl looked more like a woman than Emily recalled as well. “It’s not over,” were the only words that her little girl delivered to her in the fever dream.

Emily tries to trace a moment when she had ever heard her daughter utter those words and it takes a little doing but she recalls a case they had been working on at home the year before Carrie died. The former unit chief had warned JJ about letting their daughter know too many details about the case for fear the girl would become too invested, perhaps cause nightmares in the impressionable teen. The irony of the current situation is not lost on the older woman now. But JJ had let Carrie read over how these women were sold into a local sex trafficking ring and how when the girls were of little use, the organization had caused the girls to overdose on a mix of heroin and fentanyl to seem like an accident.

The problem remained at the time that the case was nearly unsolvable, not a trace of evidence or witness or connection that they could find that actually lead to the culprits so the BAU was forced to hand the case back over to the locals. By this point, Carrie had become engrossed in the outcome of the case. She wanted more than anything to see justice transpire for these girls. Emily knew why her daughter was so invested in the case; her best friend had gotten involved with an older boy and drugs and had overdosed at the age of sixteen. It hit close to home for the vulnerable girl at the time.

_“It’s not over,” Carrie cried when JJ informed her that they were moving on from the case, that there was nothing to be done. “It can’t be over; you can’t just let them get away with this. You can’t give up.”_

_“We’re not giving up, we’re just giving in a little,” Emily explained calmly to her daughter. “If there’s any new information or something to follow up on then I’m sure the locals will bring us right back in.”_

_“But you literally know where the guy who runs the operation lives,” Carrie fought back. “Why aren’t you kicking down his door and killing the son of a bitch?”_

_“Cause that’s not how it works, Carrie,” the older mother replied. “We have nothing to tie him explicitly to the girls or the crimes.”_

_“Besides that’s not justice, Carrie,” JJ said with a shake of her head trying to reason with her daughter._

_“That’s vengeance,” Emily had informed her daughter. “And as agents of the law, we can’t do that.”_

Emily closes her eyes thinking back to that moment. There was certainly irony there now in the memory. She hasn’t thought about that moment in a long time and she wonders why it’s coming to the forefront now, when everything felt hopeless. What was worse had been Carrie’s response back to her.

_“Well, what about as human fucking beings with hearts, huh?” Carrie had spit at her mothers. Neither woman took it personally, they knew their daughter was just upset and was trying to rectify the pain in her own mind. Vengeance was where anyone’s minds would go with things of this nature._

A twinge of pain at this memory laces the dark haired woman’s being. Maybe this memory had been embedded somewhere in her own psyche since they found Carrie’s body. This might just be why she couldn’t let go of her daughter’s own case. She sighs thinking about this, it’d be best if she had never remembered it at all honestly. Even though she was staring at her hungover, sweat-ridden face that had just violently rid itself of the drug she often used to drown herself. Emily wanted, needed another drink and she was craving it bad to ease the nerves and tension.

“Emily?” the soft voice suddenly comes from the foyer of the small cabin. She’s not sure why it surprises her so much. She briefly remembers the fact that JJ was supposed to be coming over today, that they were supposed to be discussing the end of their marriage, once and for all.

So the older woman quickly cleans out her mouth and makes her way from the bathroom through the hallway and around the corner to face where the foyer met the family room. And there JJ stood, her blue eyes wandering about the cabin. It looked worse for wear than when the blonde had left it on Saturday, bottles and glasses strewn across it. But she notices that her wife’s eyes seem to land and stick more on the pistol that lie on the coffee table where Emily had left it the night before.

Then the blue looks up to meet the bloodshot deep chestnut of her own eyes. And JJ looks physically taken aback, her eyebrows shooting in the air, “Wow, you look like shit.”

“Good to see you too, Jay,” Emily mumbles as she makes her way into the kitchen and start the keurig for some coffee and then checks her green watch for the time. It was only seven in the morning. “You’re here very, very early.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep very well last night so I figured I might as well head out here,” JJ says with a shrug. And Emily leans against the counter, her forehead falling into her hands as she is suddenly made promptly aware of the throbbing in her skull.

As JJ enters the kitchen, her eyes grow wider at the sight that seems to only worsen as she grew deeper into the old cabin. Shattered glass in the kitchen and a number of bottles of alcohol left open. It seemed in the nervous chaos that Emily had found herself in after her confrontation with JJ and the encounter with Hastings that she hadn’t been picky about her drink of choice, bouncing from bottle to bottle and never finishing one.

“It was hard last night, huh?” JJ offers, a softness to her voice, a compassion that seemed foreign to the older woman now, at least coming from her wife. This was not exactly how she saw their divorce conversation starting off but it did seem the most obvious of choices given her state. She was only surprised that her wife wasn’t more harsh. The blonde had never taken nicely to Emily’s heavy drinking since it had started last year. It had only led to a further divide and miscommunication between them.

“Well, when you’re wife suddenly decides to end things for good and threatens to take the only thing you have left,” Emily chides. “Then yeah, it’s rough.”

“I want to apologize for yesterday, I wasn’t fair to you and I realized you were right,” JJ admits and Emily can tell that she’s sincere but she doesn’t exactly know what to say in response to that so she stays quiet. “None of this has been your fault, the boys made the decision to go out, drink and start that fight and that had nothing to do with you.”

“You couldn’t stand to see the boys hurt, not after everything so I get it,” Emily says dismissively with a shrug. “I could hardly stand it myself but I was there and I was someone you could blame.”

“And I wanted to say I’m sorry,” JJ says seriously. “That wasn’t right or fair of me.”

“Have you been talking to Reid?” the brunette asks skeptically with a raise of her eyebrow.

“No, I- I just, after we talked the first time last night, I had this clarity I guess,” the younger woman says, shaking her head. “I can’t even explain it really, like everything just hit me all at once.”

“What do you mean?” Emily asks, confused, her brows furrowing.

“We’ve both been blaming each other for what happened to Carrie because we didn’t have anyone else to blame,” JJ says earnestly. She takes a breath and a moment to think about what to say next and how she wants to. “Before I always was able to break through your walls and compartmentalization, how you deal with things because it never affected me so directly but when it finally did-”

“Now I’m convinced you’ve been talking to Reid,” the older woman says, a little thrown by the turn in conversation. She realizes the coffee is done brewing in that moment. “Coffee?”

“Yeah, if you would,” JJ says with a nod.

“Cream and two sugars, coming right up,” Emily offers in a higher tone.

“I was surprised you even had cream and sugar here,” JJ says with a laugh. “Thought you had forgotten since you always adhered to the almighty Splenda.”

Emily chuckles slightly and shakes her head as she stirs the grainy substance into the milky brew, “I found old habits die hard and I just kept picking it up at the store after I left, more out of habit than anything really.”

“Look, I stayed up most the night last night thinking about everything that's happened this past year and,” JJ sighs as she takes the prepared mug her wife offers. “I realized that we’ve always dealt with the bad very differently, not just this and usually it was okay because we could lean on each other regardless, it was always smaller things, the job or whatever, not something like this, not so momentous, I guess.”

Emily nods, she was following JJ’s line of thinking closely, not that it hadn’t occurred to her logically before. But with emotions and hearts on the line, it was hard to side with logic. So she listens intently not wanting to interrupt what her wife seemed to be struggling to get out.

“So when we lost Carrie,” JJ says and the emotion makes its way to her throat thinking about it. “We went our opposite directions, I was a gaping wound and you shut down so I guess we just ended up using that against each other, am I wrong?”

“No, I don’t think you’re wrong at all,” Emily shakes her head. Still wanting to hear the rest of what JJ had to say before she felt she could truly add to the conversation.

“So when you shut down, pulled away, I didn’t understand how you could do that after losing our daughter, because you weren’t grieving the same way I was,” the blonde says with a frustrated shake of her head, tears lining her eyes yet remaining in place, refusing to fall. “I think I actually convinced myself that you didn’t care, like you didn’t love Carrie as much as I did because she wasn’t- _biologically_ she wasn’t yours.”

“How could you ever think that?” the brunette scoffs in disbelief. It hurt beyond words that her wife thought she didn’t care, that she never loved their daughter with the same intensity as her partner had.

“I really don’t know, grief I guess but when you became so focused on finding out who did this, I thought that Carrie became just another case to you,” JJ says with a hopeless shrug. “But I realize now that you used the case as a distraction so you didn’t actually _have_ to feel everything so intensely because she _was_ your daughter too, and I knew you were hurting and it hurt me that you couldn’t show it, even with me.”

“I- I couldn’t, Jay,” Emily struggles to get the words past the lump of emotion in her throat. “I still can’t sometimes, most the time.”

“I know that and that’s why you started drinking cause the case wasn’t enough, work wasn’t enough,” the younger woman offers sadly. “The boys weren’t enough; _I_ wasn’t enough so you had to drown it out.”

“It’s not that you weren’t enough, Jay,” the older woman says vehemently, wanting to make her point clear. “It’s that every goddamn I looked at you or Henry or Michael, hell, even Will, I could only see her and no one else and it’s the worst fucking-”

“I know, I know that,” JJ nods seriously, her tears were fighting hard to keep from falling now. “And we’ve both been so unfair and so fucking cruel to each other because of it cause when I think of Carrie, I think of you and how from the second she was conceived, she was destined to have that fucking Prentiss attitude.”

The younger blonde was openly crying now, pulling at every wall Emily had built up over the last year and she’s fighting the emotion with everything she’s got. She’s knows she will eventually lose the battle but not right now, not here, not like this.

“And I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I blamed you for everything because I was wrong, because I couldn’t talk to you without-” and JJ loses it entirely, a sob escaping her mouth. She had started making her way closer to her wife with every statement. “I see every bit of her in you and it makes me love you and hate you so goddamn much, Em.”

“JJ, I can’t,” Emily says clenching her teeth tight, her lips sewn nearly completely shut to keep her own emotions at bay. “I can’t do this, Jay.”

“Yes, yes, you can because I know you feel it, somewhere deep down,” JJ says with a nod. “I know you feel everything, I know it hurts to look at me, to look in my eyes because they were hers, and I want you to know that I understand why you fell headfirst into the case, why you need to close it so bad, I see it in Michael now but I need you for one minute…”

“JJ…” the dark-haired woman warns her wife, eyes growing thicker with tears by the second, her lip quivering the slightest bit. “Don’t.”

“The other night… when we…” JJ starts but trails off, thinking back to the moment. “When we were together, when you freaked out, did you see…?”

“Our daughter dying?” Emily looks up at her wife, her brown eyes piercing, looking heavier, tired and wearier then JJ had ever noticed before. The woman looked like she had been holding the pieces of herself together by a thread and the thread was threatening to sever. It’s what she’s never allowed to happen but it’s what needed to happen.

“Emily, you have to let go at some point, whether we ever get closure, you’re gonna have to let go,” the blonde says seriously. “You’re gonna have to stop drowning yourself, stop living like this… last night, I actually… I unplugged Carrie’s phone from the charger in her room… it’s not much but I have been listening to her voicemail every day for the past year and it’s gotten me nowhere and it’s left me feeling empty and alone.”

“I didn’t even know it was still active,” the older woman says with a shake of her head.

“I haven’t gotten to the point where I can cut it off yet but I’ll get there one day,” JJ says with a nod of her head. “And I need you to try to get to the point where you can look at me and not see our daughter’s corpse.”

Emily inhales deeply at the words, the breaking of JJ’s voice brings the tears back and a thought enters her head, one she doesn’t want to think about in another grasp at false hope. She can’t help herself, her human nature always held onto the faintest hints of hope.

“I need you to get help, Emily,” the younger woman offers. “I did talk to Spencer yesterday actually, he told me that you called him Saturday night, something about the boys being here made _you_ call _him_ , made you not reach for the bottle and that, right there, tells me there’s hope and that you’re not lost, that you can be that honorable, loving, caring woman again, a mother to the boys, my _wife_ again.”

The brunette had cast her head down as JJ had offered her own ideas about her life but when she had offered the hope of them, of their life together, as a couple, married with their sons again, Emily’s head snaps up. Something chips away in her icy cold heart. Like the first warm and bright day in a long, dark and harsh winter.

“I thought it was over,” the former unit chief regales. “This, me and you.”

“It will be,” the former supervisory special agent says seriously with another nod. “If you can’t get help, if you don’t want to and if you keep travelling down this road of self-destruction and can’t let it go.”

“How in the hell do you just expect me to let my dead daughter go, JJ?” Emily asks, emphasizing every word between her clenched teeth and tense muscles.

“It’s like you told Henry when we arrived the other day,” JJ says, her expression softening, tears endlessly welling, tilting her head in understanding. “She’ll always be in your heart, Em, always be a part of you so you don’t have to hold on so tightly to how she died, you let _that_ part go, not the part where she lived and breathed and brought joy to every person she met. You don’t ever let go of that.”

Emily scoffs now, saying it like that was so easy but when she held so many regrets from when Carrie was still alive didn’t make it any easier. She didn’t know if it was possible.

“She’s not just another victim, Em, another dead body with an unsub to catch,” JJ says sadly with a shake of her head. “She’s our daughter and we made mistakes along the way but we did nothing, I have to believe that we did nothing that caused this, that we could’ve done anything different because we can’t live like that.”

The older woman feels the chill run over her nerves, she felt like the blonde could read her mind, her thoughts, her every regret. Did she feel it too? Did she live with the guilt also? Was she actually not alone in her suffering? They had never discussed it before, never talked at length about it. And maybe they still weren’t, Emily had barely said anything after all but how did JJ know what to say to get under her skin? To suddenly pry open every wound that she had tried to suture with floss this past year.

“You know it’s not your fault, right, Em?” JJ asks with furrowed brow, stepping ever closer while Emily just lowers her head without saying a word. “You know, it doesn’t come down to you to catch the guy that raped and killed her? The case isn’t ours anymore and you don’t have to kill yourself a little at a time to do that.”

“I had a dream last night, you remember how upset she was when we had to let that sex trafficking case go?” the brunette asks of her wife. “You remember how she just kept saying, ‘it’s not over,’ ‘it can’t be over’ and that’s what she kept saying in the dream to me. She needs me to do this, Jay.”

“It was a dream, honey, and it’s just your subconscious dropping every single ounce of guilt you feel on you,” JJ analyzes and it brings back the profiler in her, awakens the old skills. “It’s not Carrie, Em, she may have died horrifically but she died knowing how much we loved her, how proud of her we were, she died with so much love and I believe because of that that she is peaceful regardless.”

Emily shakes her head defiantly; she doesn’t think it’s truly sinking in with her wife what she meant. She doesn’t think she understands this part entirely.

“You know what I think Carrie wants for us, right now?” JJ asks, she taps her left middle finger on the counter beside her, the same one that Emily stood leaning her hand and body against a foot away. “I think she’d want us to remember all the good parts… she wouldn’t-”

“What?” Emily asks, she sees from the expression on JJ’s face that she is lost in some memory.

“Do you remember when she was like, I don’t know, eleven or twelve and me and you had gotten into a fight over punishment for something she had done?” the blonde asks with a squint of her eyes. “And it really wasn’t even that bad but I was sleeping in the office because I was up late working on a report and she went to both of us, she actually grabbed you by the hand and brought you to the office and she told us that it wasn’t either of our faults and apologized and begged us not to get a divorce because of it.”

The dark-haired woman actually lets a short snort of a laugh escape from her at the memory. It had been so ridiculous that the girl had thought they would get a divorce over something so petty but she was still young and all she knew was that her mothers were fighting and hurting because of her. Then it hits Emily like a brick wall and she sighs.

“She wouldn’t want us to blame ourselves and she sure as hell wouldn’t want us fighting, I think she would hope that this would bring us together, not tear us apart,” JJ manages before she chokes up again. “She couldn’t stand to see us like this, blaming ourselves, thinking it’s our fault that she’s dead and to see you literally killing yourself over it, it would break her heart, Em.”

When the former unit chief finally lost it, she thought it would be by herself, maybe downing another drink and letting herself burst a seam one-by-one a little at a time. But no, at the thought of her daughter watching every single moment that she had lived, everything that she’d done to herself, to the girl’s mother and brothers, she collapses all at once. The dam breaks, the well overflows as she is suddenly sobbing.

JJ is quickly in front of her, the equally tall blonde is grabbing ahold of her wife as if she would never let go, as if she let go then it would be the last time. She holds the ever strong Emily Prentiss as she finally allows herself to feel all the grief she had ignored, built up as it literally rotted away her insides and now finally completely releases itself.

“It’s not your fault, Em, and it’s not all your responsibility,” JJ whispers into her wife’s ear as the woman continues to weep into her shoulder, hands holding tight around her back. “Carrie wouldn’t want you carrying this on your shoulders, taking this all head-on by yourself cause you can’t, no one can, babe.”

“I need help, Jay,” the brunette says through her sob. “I can’t be strong, I can’t do this-”

“You can’t do this alone, honey, and you don’t have to,” JJ offers. “This is strength, admitting you can’t do it by yourself, that you need help is the strongest thing you could do and I am done letting you shut yourself off to us, cause we are here and we’re gonna do this together, okay? Every step of the way because the boys miss their mother, _I_ miss my wife.”

She feels the feint nod from her partner as she vanishes into her tears and JJ lets herself cry too. They let themselves mourn the loss of their child, the near loss of each other, their marriage, their family and all the hurts that have been caused, together. Finally, for the first time in over a year, Emily and JJ let themselves fall apart together, tear it all down to possibly start building anew whatever that may look like. Nothing was simple, nothing was easy and nothing was yet cured but as a unit, they could face it now more readily.

They stand there for a while, JJ holding and keeping Emily upright, holding all the broken parts together with her own. But the tears eventually dry up, and there’s nothing left. There in the bright early morning light of the kitchen, they had accomplished something that neither had thought possible.

When Emily finds her own two feet, standing on her own and withdraws a little from her wife, looking at her in all her messy glory. What could be seen as weakness found in her bloodshot eyes and dark circles underneath them, in the aging lines that hadn’t been there a year prior. JJ thinks she’s never seen a stronger or more beautiful sight in her life.

“God, I missed you and I know it’s gonna be a long road,” JJ sighs with wistfulness in her tone. “But I cannot wait to fight every obstacle with you again, to hold you like this every single day; I missed every part of this, looking at you when it’s hardest but knowing it's going to be alright, making love to you, making you feel every ounce of worth and feel it in your bones. I can’t even remember the last time I told you I love you and truly felt it like I do now.”

“I love you so goddamn much,” Emily breathes words that had been uttered but not intended to mean much more than placation over the last year and that’s when JJ kisses Emily for the first time in over six months. That unspoken line was spoken now, a line that had been drawn wiped away by the pursuit of proof that they could move forward, that no true love was lost when they came together.

The electricity is different this time than it had been that past Friday night. This was not out of self-pity or wanton, staved desire or ultimate destruction. It was to prove, to mend, to meld and to give freely a love that had been contained to its teeming point. This couldn’t be held longer, they had bent so long that they needed to cast the iron upright again.

So Emily isn’t exactly surprised when JJ’s warm hand finds the skin of her hip beneath the untucked button-up from days prior that she hadn’t peeled away. JJ finds the expanse of her ivory stomach with her palms and fingers. Their mouths still intertwining, separating only seconds to join and breathe each other in again. Those hands find their way beneath the back of Emily’s jeans and lifts the body of the brunette just enough to land her on the low counter beside them now.

“I need show you what my love means again, what happened the other night wasn’t it,” JJ whispers against her wife’s lips softly with small shake of her head. “That was begging to feel something, needing you to hurt me but this, this is me needing to love you.”

“Just shut up already,” Emily says as she grabs her wife’s jaw as she leans down, finding her lips again in another languid kiss that held its own language, its own words and conversation, stating everything that needed to be.

JJ’s hands free themselves momentarily before they pull at the collar of the navy buttoned shirt and she only breaks away from her wife’s lips to land her own against the woman’s jaw and lower. Her adept fingers relearning the paths less travelled recently, not travelled at all really as she releases each of the fastened tabs that had kept the secrets of her wife from her for what felt like eternity to the blonde.

Her lips landing at the woman’s collarbone, right at the base of her neck as she delivers the brunette from the last clasp of the shirt. She feels the moan ripple down to her lips from her wife’s throat and it sets her nerves alight, she nearly fumbles as she reaches to pull the shirt from her shoulders to reveal one her favorite parts of her partner. JJ simply disconnects her lips from the delicate reddened skin to look up at the brown of her equal’s eyes.

But the blue irises don’t linger long; instead they trail to the full of the woman’s breast as she breathes and pants now unevenly. Her chest rising and falling in such erratic patterns that JJ actually thinks she can see the former unit chief’s heart trying to flutter its way from the cavity of her chest through to the skin. Emily hadn’t worn a bra and the younger woman had never been so grateful for the comfortability of the small town living that the woman had led recently.

Yet the blonde doesn’t exactly watch after the brunette’s chest in a form of lust or need of reclamation. No, she looks after her wife’s body with a longing as if she was coming home again, maybe she was. JJ had missed the small and quiet moments, when words had failed but she could lay her head on Emily’s chest and they would know without speaking. She missed the granted comfortability and safety that lie in the alabaster skin between the older woman’s breasts so she leans her forehead against it again lightly. Her breath a ghost over the skin that already had the darkened areas to her left and right at attention. With the feeling of her wife’s breathing and a soft hand landing easily in her light tresses, JJ finally comes home again.

The red of her lips line the woman’s sternum softly before her tongue meets to taste and she sucks only slightly to savor. She holds her wife close, holding harder at her hips forcing Emily’s center to meet at her abdomen and the woman moans.

“Jay, please,” Emily manages to moan out. “I need you.”

“I know, baby, and I got you,” JJ offers as she looks up at her wife, grabbing her by the neck, lips so close. “Shh, just feel this.”

JJ makes her moves now, her lips meeting her wife’s again with a little more urgency but still taking her time to earn back all that had been lost to her. The slender fingers make their way slowly down from the woman’s shoulders and over each breast, Emily keens when she feels her wife’s finger close slightly upon her nipples before she grasps entirely. She can’t rein in the husky curse from her lips, “Fuck.”

“Shh,” the blonde utters as she disconnects her lips, one of her hands sliding up to place a finger over the older woman’s lips for only a seconds time to get her point across. Her hands then start making their familiar trail downward again and they find a purpose at Emily's sides, sliding agonizingly slow.

But the brunette feels the soft lips of her wife land at her right breast and her tongue mapping its way around like tracing stars in the sky and she sighs at the sensation. She watches the younger woman nuzzle her lips and nose across her chest to apply a similar but different trail of diagram in a silent dialect to its equal. JJ lands back at the center of her chest. The older woman not realizing that her wife’s hands had made their own traces now to the lining of her jeans, the left and the right making their way to each other like lost lovers to the button in the center and the blonde gives it a tug but not yet releasing it. A deep groan that escapes the former unit chief was cause enough for her to relent however.

As her hands make themselves useful, JJ lands kisses down the dark-haired woman’s abdomen, causing Emily to lean back and arch herself into them. As her fingers wrap into the waist of the rough jeans, she nips just above her wife’s naval which causes a chain reaction, the older woman’s hips jutting up just enough for her to slide the pants and underwear from her wife’s ass and down her legs. JJ can’t help but stop momentarily to smirk up at the woman above her.

“JJ, I swear to god…” Emily threatens weakly, her hand landing at the crown of JJ’s hair but they both know it’s empty. JJ always did have her full reign when allowed such. The blonde could allow her a sense of control on occasion but she always destined the course.

So the younger woman doesn’t need to respond instead she simply manages to rid the woman entirely of the rest of her clothing and kneels more readily now, knowing exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it. So she pulls her wife closer by the inside of her knees and her lips land at the inside of her right thigh and Emily can’t help but squirm at the snail’s pace the former agent was taking.

The raven-haired woman’s body already tense from the extended time that it hadn’t found release and it left her more than ready. JJ could sense it, she didn’t even have to touch yet to know because she could smell it. It’s what moves her lips and tongue faster along their route, she had craved this often but never so much in the way she did now. Needing to taste the love, the want, the need and knowing it’s only for her. Emily, literally and figuratively, couldn’t open up in any such way except for her and it lit her nerves on fire.

So the younger woman's tongue finding it's desired taste, she finds herself just as turned on as Emily, every moan, groan, squirm and thrust from the pleasure she bestows upon her wife shot through the blonde. And as she slowly enters her fingers into her wife, she felt everything. She could ace any class in Emily Prentiss’ body language and sounds so when she hears the older woman’s breath catch and shallowly return in rapid succession, she immediately recognizes the meaning.

Intent on curbing the hitch, she slows her hand in its rhythm and stands from her kneeled position to watch her wife’s face closely, her head turned, eyes shut tight and her teeth deeply indenting in her bottom lip so much that it could bleed. She senses the panic and pleasure all mixing together at once. The younger woman merely whispers, “Em, look at me.”

It takes a little prodding but Emily finally does, her wide brown eyes meeting their blue counterparts blown wide, nearly black now. “Hey, it’s okay to feel this because it’s real,” JJ says as she leans her forehead against her wife’s. “Just feel this... I love you, I love you, I love you.”

JJ murmurs the words over and over as she places kisses along the woman’s delicate face, a mantra of love and confession and openness that eases her wife’s nerves until the woman finally gasps and breathes out the pleasure. The blonde kisses her again, her hand intent in its purposes even though she feels the slight pain from the cuts and bruises that line her knuckles from cursing the ground just a few days prior. She wills through the pain because she needed this, her wife needed this and when she kisses her, its like the last moment on earth. Momentous and passionate, JJ can taste the iron. Emily had bit through her lip causing the blood to slowly seep through to the skin.

But their lips meet in a fiery concession, neither trying to earn control but an easy back and forth. A sign that they could still do this, they could still give and take of each other. So when Emily’s fingers easily slides down the front of JJ’s jeans with no fight or contention, the younger woman’s lip slacken for the moment. She was keyed up with her own pleasure that had steadily been building. Both knowing this couldn’t last much longer.

The blonde still felt the hint of hesitation from her wife however, she still sensed the tightness in her wife’s limbs and muscles as she easily glides in and out of her. Here she was offering her love and support and all the pleasure they had denied themselves the past year and Emily was still fighting. Somewhere JJ knew that this was because she thought she didn’t deserve it. The former agent was determined to prove the former unit chief wrong however, she finds it in herself ready to be that anti-thesis again. One that could breakthrough walls and stumble into the darkness of this woman and be the light. She could do that and as she finds the right angle with her fingers, JJ penetrates all her wife’s defenses.

“Let go, Em,” JJ mumbles against the woman’s lips, heavy with breath. She was trying to keep herself together in spite of Emily’s own offering of pleasure to her own form. “I need you to let go for me, babe. I’m here, just you and me.”

“Jay, I can-”

“You can because you feel it,” JJ says, her voice shaking now. She was close, Emily always knew exactly what she was doing if she was determined to gain the upper hand. But Jennifer Jareau was nothing but stubborn in her own willful denial. “I can feel it, the way you’re touching me right now, fuck. Can you feel it, can you feel how much I love you, how much you mean to me?”

“Yeah, I feel it,” Emily says with a brief nod of her head, her breath growing increasingly rapid. JJ’s words, hot breath, her delicate fingers inside of her and feeling how wet this was making her wife were all sending signals to her nerves and body that her mind was having a hard time counteracting.

“Then come for me,” JJ whispers, barely even able to move her lips with the pleasure she felt on the edge of tiding over, like a wave rising set to crash at any moment. “I’m so close, please, I want- fuck- I want to come together. I’m so fucking close, god.”

“Fuck, Jay,” the older woman exclaims. A few more steady pumps at just the right angles for both women, this unspoken language that they instinctively knew exactly what would bring their partner over with them, what would be their undoing and together they find that middle ground. With walls crumbling around them, they find the peak together. Both shaking with the feeling of fading ecstasy yet their limbs still manage to ease the tide coming in and back out again as they slow their motions.

JJ leaning heavily now against the counter and her wife, arms awkwardly shoved between them but neither makes much of an effort to move. Just breath and beating hearts thrumming in their ears. Like the aftershock of a bomb, leaving them stunned and deafened. One thing they both instinctively feel, is that they had finally come home. The long winter of the past year that had darkened their lives, the clouds now starting to retreat and both we’re convinced that they could see glimmers of the sun again.

The blonde swallows hard as she manages to peel her hand away from her wife, her head still leaning against the brunette’s forehead. She takes her own fingers and cleans them with her mouth, tongue and teeth. With the taste, a thought suddenly washes ashore amongst the murkiness of her mind however and she grabs Emily’s jaw with her hands, thumbs caressing the ivory skin there. Her eyes not quite able to look up just yet as she says the words, Emily just watches as best she can through the close contact.

“There’s something I need to tell you, Em,” JJ says slowly. “But I need you to listen and not just react, alright? Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t think I can even move to react right now in all honesty,” Emily says with a chuckle but JJ’s blue eyes suddenly shoot up to her own. So quickly it was a flashing, fleeting glance of warning. And the former unit chief knows this is serious.

“Hastings killed Caroline,” JJ declares in barely a whisper but the echo feels loud in the older woman’s ears. Their intimacy and closeness forging them together had allowed her to hear. Emily’s muscles tighten however, shocked still. Not knowing how to take in the information, her mind running through so many questions she can’t even grasp one and it ultimately ceases to a blank canvas.

“What?” is the only word available at the tip of her tongue now.

“I didn’t remember this at first, all the adrenaline of what happened to Michael Friday night made everything a little obscure but when I approached Hastings after he hit our son, I heard him say…” JJ shakes her head, trying to will the words out a little at a time. “He asked if Michael was drunk and then said, ‘Like that whore of a sister of yours was… I shouldn’t have stopped with her, I should’ve taken every single one of those rude, rowdy bitches last year.’”

Emily’s mind is at a standstill, she had never quite felt her brain short circuiting the way it was now. Everything seems to start piecing together for her, her senses just trying to catch up with it all. Her mind feels like a puzzle that was slowly emerging as an entirely whole picture now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t remember it, I was just caught up in the moment that night but then last night, when you told me what Hastings said yesterday, it triggered something and-” the blonde agent starts to ramble, her hands going over her eyes in distress and anxiety and anger with herself before Emily’s own catch them, pulling them away. The brunette manages to look her wife in the eye yet somehow seeming to remain entirely unseeing now.

The look sends a chill down JJ’s spine, she was afraid that she knew exactly what that look meant. She had only seen it once before, the night that Emily resigned from the FBI altogether. The night she had taken another man's life in cold blood.

The words come out calculating, like a machine sawing off the emotion as the older woman easily and simply proclaims, “I’m going to kill him, Jennifer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter comes from the song “Virgin” by Manchester Orchestra.


End file.
